


i'm stepping on the cracks (i feel fine)

by sofarsoperfect



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Explicit Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong, Scattered Cursing, Slight Alternate Universe - Cafe / Bakery, Sprite China Line, Sprite Qian Kun, Strangers to Lovers, Trigger Warnings, War, War from an Outside Perspective, comprehensive list of trigger warnings in author's note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25760644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofarsoperfect/pseuds/sofarsoperfect
Summary: "How do you know that I’m not the bad guy? How do you justify it?”It’s a heavy line of questioning and Johnny rests his own mug on the counter. He could think about this for a long time and come up with a slew of answers but one is always on his mind and it matters the absolute most to him.“Because you were hurt,” Johnny says. “Because even if I don’t have all the answers and all the facts and I don’t know for certain that you’re not the one in the wrong, I have a bleeding heart, Kun, and I was going to help you regardless of the facts. [..] I justify it in that… no matter who you are and what you’ve done, no one deserves to die like that.”“You might be an idiot,” Kun says and Johnny rolls his eyes, grinning to himself. “But you’ve got one hell of a heart, Johnny.”“It’s my worst flaw,” Johnny comments, winking at Kun over the lip of his mug as he brings it up to his lips again.
Relationships: Suh Youngho | Johnny/Qian Kun
Comments: 9
Kudos: 96





	i'm stepping on the cracks (i feel fine)

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome back. this fic was another game of 'start it a one point, return to it at a much later point' and it's been a bit of a bear for me to finish so i hope everyone who reads it enjoys it. 
> 
> *trigger warnings:  
> descriptions of blood / blood-like substances;  
> mentions of war;  
> light mental health commentary;  
> vague / non-descript body horror;  
> graphic depictions of both genitalia on a singular body
> 
> please remember that these warnings are listed for the mental health and safety of all my readers and if you find there are other events or items in this fic that you feel as though should be included on this list, please let me know
> 
> **mildly beta'd

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Johnny is mumbling as he lowers the man in his arms to his bed. 

“Shut up,” he scolds, though it comes out low and slurred. He releases the grip on Johnny’s shirt slowly and Johnny eases his arms out from underneath him as he lands on the bed. He shifts onto his side, eyes blinking slowly as he adjusts. Johnny hovers at his side for a series of moments, hands hovering near the man but not actually doing anything because he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Please get away from me, you’re stressing me out,” the man mumbles and Johnny stumbles back quickly, almost tripping over himself to get away from him. Johnny tugs his desk chair over to sit by the man’s side as he wrestles with his jacket where he’s lying on the bed. 

It takes a few minutes but when he finally manages to free himself from both his jacket and shirt Johnny realizes why he thought he felt something moving against his arm when he picked the man up to begin with, arm around his back. 

The man’s wings tumble and splay across the bed, thin and translucent, shimmering like an oil slick, blue-silver. They’re an interesting shape, dragonfly-esque, and Johnny resists the urge to reach out and touch because that seems rude and like a general social faux pas.

Johnny doesn’t actually know what the social rules are, he’s never met someone with wings and he’s certainly never had to drop them into his bed, barely conscious and leaking what looks like blood but is the completely wrong color. He’s making this up as he goes because he doesn’t think a hospital would really know what to do either. 

“Let me get you… uh… something,” Johnny says and darts from the room. The man makes a low sound, it’s almost like a chuckle, as he turns mostly onto his stomach. He’s aware he’s bleeding and he feels kind of bad about the fact that he’s most definitely getting blood on this strange human’s sheets but he hopes it comes out in the wash. 

If not, his sheets might be a little extra shiny. Whatever.

Johnny returns with a towel and a vague explanation about how he’s still bleeding everywhere so the man takes the towel with a little smile, attempting to mop up the blood. It’s strange, how the fabric seems unwilling to absorb the liquid, but with a little negotiating it finally does, seeping into the navy blue towel. 

It seems to disappear almost entirely, leaving behind only a shimmer on the surface of the fabric. It’s a very strange thing, the way the translucent silver liquid seeps like an unending faucet from the scratches carved into the man’s upper chest but disappears almost entirely once it makes contact with fabric. 

“Would you like me to get you anything? Food, water… medical supplies?” Johnny suggests, watching the way the man throws the towel down on the bed only to roll over, pressing his chest into it. He’s still bleeding but he doesn’t seem to find that too terribly inconvenient, only lying across the towel, arm curled under his head to pillow it. 

“I don’t think any of your supplies will do me much good,” he says, eyes fluttering a little. “But some water would be fine. Cold, if you don’t mind.” 

Johnny disappears almost as soon as it’s said and the man buries his face into his arm. Johnny comes back, a tall glass of water filled with ice in hand, and watches the man for a moment as he rests. He’s still got his face in his arm and he mumbles a thank you as Johnny sets the water on his bedside tables, plopping back down in his desk chair. 

Johnny figures he should be more worried about this. There’s a man, bleeding some strange silver substance all over, shirtless, with long, fluttering wings lying in his bed. It’s all very odd and Johnny wants to put this all off on a crazed delusion. He has been hiding in his apartment for the past month or so, what with having lost his job at the office and all. Maybe he really does need to get out of the house more. 

But also maybe not considering he went to Jaehyun’s for all of two hours and came back to find this guy lying on the floor in the middle of his living room. 

“Who are you?” Johnny asks and he thinks that’s a question he should’ve asked a while ago but it only just now becomes relevant in his head. “What’s your name?” 

“Knowing my name isn’t going to do you any favors,” the man answers cryptically and Johnny leans back in his chair. The man lifts his head only so much that he can rest his cheek on his arm, looking at Johnny through half-lidded eyes. “My being here is dangerous enough. And I’m sorry for that.” 

“Well, you’ve already bled all over my house, I don’t think it makes much of a difference if I know your name,” Johnny points out and a little half smile shows up on the man’s lips. He’s got a dimple. 

“Kun,” he answers softly.

“Okay, Kun,” Johnny states. “Next question, what are you? A fairy?” 

“How very western-centric of you,” Kun says, stretching out and Johnny huffs a laugh. 

“Alright, damn,” Johnny mumbles. “How dare I be so ignorant? There’s just a man with wings lying in my bed, who is clearly not part bird and there’s no extensive records of any winged humanoid creatures in eastern literature that match your description. I am just… the worst,” Johnny goes on and Kun gives him a narrow-eyed look as he pushes himself up onto his hands, but there’s a smile hovering around his lips. 

“I see your point,” he replies softly. “Also that’s a very long-winded way of saying that.” Kun pauses, getting up on his knees in the middle of Johnny’s bed. His wings spread out and the cast blue-silver shadows across the bed and Johnny’s ugly beige carpeting from the light coming in the window at the end of his bed. They’re absolutely beautiful. “What do you know about mythical records?” He asks and Johnny shifts slightly. 

“My mom’s a mythical lore professor at the university back home,” he says, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. “She read them to me a lot when I was younger. I still have a few books that she gave me around here,” he says and though his eyes look around casually Kun can see they linger on his floor to ceiling bookshelf along the wall next to his bed. 

He keeps them close.

“Yes, well,” Kun sighs. “You make a good point. While I’m not technically a fairy I can’t tell you that it’s a completely inaccurate description. We’re distantly, very distantly, related,” Kun explains and Johnny tilts his head at him. “It’s a very complicated world I live in.” 

“I imagine so,” Johnny says and his eyes dart to where there are still gashes along his collarbones. Kun crosses his arms over his chest a little self consciously and Johnny gets up a moment later. Kun watches him cross the room, tug a flannel button-down from his closet, and then thrust it in Kun’s direction. “Wear this. Your shirt must be destroyed.” 

“Thank you,” Kun says, gently taking the offered shirt. Johnny crosses back over to his chair, sitting down gingerly as Kun pulls the shirt on, buttoning the front meticulously. The flannel is too big on him, in practically every way, but it’s not an unattractive look on him at all. Johnny picks up the glass of water he got for Kun and hands it to him, Kun taking a careful sip, cradling it between his hands. 

“How did you get here?” Johnny asks. “I assume you’re not from around here.” 

“Yes and no,” Kun says, lowering the glass. His fingertips tap against the side of the glass as he thinks, clearly uncertain how to answer Johnny. He waits patiently as Kun thinks. He takes the time to catalog everything he’s seeing. 

Kun’s wings are out of sight now, folded down along his back but peeking out the bottom of his shirt. They match the silver-blue of Kun’s hair that, now that Johnny’s seen his wings, he’s pretty sure is a natural shade. That only begs more questions that Johnny doesn’t think he’s allowed to ask, and when Kun’s dark brown eyes catch the light just right they glow silver-blue like when an animal stares back at you in the middle of the night. It’s a most curious feature. 

“In human terms,” Kun begins and it takes Johnny’s attention away from his thought about Kun’s back and the strange place where his wings were fixed to it. “I suppose you could say I stumbled through the veil.” 

The ‘veil’ is an obscure idea but not one Johnny isn’t familiar with. It’s a weird term, Johnny always thought so and so did his mom but he supposes that’s because it’s a hard phenomenon for humans to wrap their heads around, the place between their world and things beyond their own. His mom, besides being a mythological lore professor, has always been a strong proponent of the spiritual world and the supernatural. Johnny thinks that might be why Kun doesn’t freak him out as much as he might any other person. 

“There are things out there, beyond our knowledge and science,” his mother has always said. “Things beyond our understanding.” 

Johnny thinks Kun might be one of those things. 

“It does exist?” Johnny asks and Kun sighs. 

“It’s not… what you think it is,” Kun explains delicately. “It’s less a veil and more of an… in-between space. Things live there, exist there.” 

“Like limbo.” 

“More or less,” Kun agrees. “There’s a place that’s not here and there’s here and there’s…” he trails off and Johnny thinks he understands. Or as close to understanding as he thinks he can get with his limited knowledge of the world as it is. 

“The place between here and there,” Johnny finishes. “You’re from there.” 

“Most creatures like me are,” Kun says. Funny, Johnny considers. He doesn’t say ‘people’ he says ‘creatures.’ “There’s a freedom given to creatures like me. Both realms are available to you, to roam and exist in… but you have to understand, I don’t belong to either of them,” Kun states and Johnny tilts his head. Kun gives him a sad smile. “I’m from the place between. That’s where I live. That’s where I have to return to. That’s where I always have to return to.” 

“Perhaps I’m not making sense,” Kun says and though Johnny has a playful and wild imagination he is still struggling with the gravity of what Kun means. “But things exist within their realms for a reason. I suppose I can leave it at that.” 

Johnny’s still not sure he completely understands but he can see the end of a conversation when it arrives. 

“So why are you here?” 

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t give these to myself,” Kun says, pulling on the collar of the shirt to show Johnny his cuts again. They’re jagged and ugly and there’s a thin, sparkly crust along the edges of them like they’re trying to scab over. For how deep and consistently they bled they seem to be healing quickly. “I didn’t mean to come this far.” 

‘Come this far’ like he traveled a distance to get here. 

“Something was after you?” Johnny asks and Kun nods, taking another sip of his water. “Should I be concerned?” 

“I hope not,” Kun says but it still makes Johnny’s muscles tense with anxiety. “They’re after me, not you. You should be fine once I leave. Which I should be doing now,” He says, setting the glass aside again. He gets to his feet but he doesn’t even make it a step towards the door before he almost crumples under his own weight, wobbling on his feet. Johnny catches him before he can fall, the two of them tumbling to the ground as Kun’s legs give out underneath him. 

“You’re too weak,” Johnny says. “Stay here for a while,” he tells him but Kun only shakes his head. 

“I can’t. Something might happen to you. We’re working on borrowed time as it is.” 

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Johnny points out, even if it doesn’t look like it. There’s a slightly sparkly sheen on everything Kun’s bled on which is the only sign that he’s bled on them at all but it’s still all over Johnny’s apartment. His carpets, his bed, the towel is shimmering like someone’s poured an entire canister of craft glitter on it. He wonders briefly if that’s gonna come out in the wash. “C’mon,” Johnny says and he heaves Kun back to his feet, depositing Kun on his bed again. “You need to rest.” 

Kun’s hands rest on Johnny’s shoulders and he looks as though simply getting to his feet has taken a lot out of him. His eyes are half-mast again, unfocused, and Johnny kneels in front of him, hands on Kun’s waist. When Kun’s eyes find his again, he moves a hand to rest it on the side of Johnny’s neck and he can feel Johnny’s pulse jump under his touch. 

“What’s your name?” Kun asks. 

“Oh, uh… Johnny,” Johnny says, completely forgetting he hadn’t actually given Kun his name. 

“Will you give it to me?” Kun asks and it takes Johnny just a moment before he remembers everything his mother always taught him about fairies. 

“No, I won’t,” Johnny says. “But you may call me Johnny.” The corner of Kun’s lips tilts up in a smile and he brushes his thumb over Johnny’s adam’s apple. 

“So you do know the rules. Don’t ever forget them,” Kun tells him. 

Johnny helps Kun lie down in his bed to rest and Johnny begins cleaning up his apartment, hangs Kun’s jacket on his coat rack, throws his ruined shirt out, and begins a load of laundry with the towel he had given Kun in it. He’s not gone for more than ten minutes but when he returns Kun is gone. 

“Was he cute at least?” Taeyong asks and Johnny scoffs as he scrubs at the spot in his living room rug.

“I hate you,” Johnny tells him, his phone sitting on the floor next to him, speakerphone on. Taeyong laughs, shuffling around on the other end of the line. Johnny has no idea why he called Taeyong, he may be his best friend in the whole damn world but he has never, in his entire life, given Johnny any kind of advice without also being a little shit about it. Johnny tosses his scrub brush in his bucket and stares at the spot. 

It’s still sparkling like someone upended a tin of silver glitter in that one singular spot and Johnny’s feeling rather cross with Kun at the moment. 

“Well, if you’re losing your mind it would be nice if the figment of your imagination was cute at least,” Taeyong offers from his phone and Johnny sighs, sitting back on his butt and grabbing for his phone. 

“It was a dream, Taeyong,” Johnny tells him. “You know I’ve been sleeping weird ever since I lost my job.” 

“You know I would hire you!” Taeyong shouts at him and Johnny pulls his phone away from his face. It wasn’t that close but Taeyong’s voice sometimes gets a little shrill whenever he scolds Johnny and it’s a lot on his eardrums if Taeyong is feeling especially annoyed with him. “I could always use a new baker in my kitchen.” 

“I grow tired of telling you I can get my own job, Yong,” Johnny sighs at his friend. 

Johnny’s not a complete idiot so he framed the entire deranged episode as a dream in an effort to seem at least kind of normal. It’s a stretch, especially when he’s sitting on the floor of his living room, having this conversation as he tries to scrub what looks like the equivalent of glitter glue out of his carpet. 

Apparently fairy blood does coagulate and it’s a very tough thing to get up out of fabrics once it does. Johnny stepped on his morning and definitely thought he’d spilled something very unfortunate in his carpet the night before. 

For the record, his towel and sheets are still glittery as well. Johnny has no idea what the fuck is in Kun’s blood but it’s very annoying when he’s a 25-year-old bachelor who’s fabrics suddenly look like he owns a four-year-old. 

“You’re bitching about being unemployed but you won’t let me help you fix it,” Taeyong tells him, clearly also growing tired of this conversation. 

“Because I love you and I want to keep loving you, and Doie. And that won’t be an option if I work for you,” Johnny tells him and Taeyong sighs long-suffering at him. Johnny sets his phone on the coffee table and changes tactics, getting up off the floor to look for his stain spray, hoping that if he lets it sit for a while, or an hour, the carpet will at least stop feeling clumpy and disgusting. 

“Okay, well have you been putting out applications?” Taeyong asks and Johnny huffs from where he’s stuck his head in his linen closet’s floor, rooting through his containers of cleaning supplies. 

“Yes, Taeyong,” Johnny says, monotone, as he finally finds what he’s been looking for. “I’ve been putting out applications everywhere,” he tells him, coming back into the living room, armed with stain spray. “It’s not my fault no one wants to hire me,” Johnny complains, beginning to spray at the stain liberally. 

“God, what the fuck did you spill that you can’t get out?” Taeyong complains. 

“Uh… red wine,” Johnny lies because it’s totally believable. But if he still can’t get this stain out he might actually have to spill red wine here to make the lie believable if Taeyong ever comes over. Or he’ll just throw the rug out. That might be a better solution. 

“Jesus you’re a mess,” Taeyong says and Johnny can’t defend against that.

It’s cold. It’s the middle of August but the temperature feels as though it’s dropped by 20 degrees in the space of an hour and Johnny tugs his jacket closer to himself. He looks up into the sky as though there will be an answer for this sudden temperature decline up there but nothing but the waxing moon looks down at him. He only wore a hoodie on his midnight walk so he’s absolutely freezing and speeds up the pace of his walk to get home faster. 

Johnny didn’t used to go on late-night walks but he wasn’t lying to Taeyong when he said he was having trouble sleeping. It’s one of the reasons he hasn’t completely eliminated the idea of a Kun being a delusion. He’s barely able to sleep for more than five hours before he’s up and wandering around his apartment like some sort of exhausted, unemployed ghost. He’s taken to walking around the park not far from his house because at least he’s not staring at his same four walls for hours on end. 

But tonight the trees seem menacing and it’s cold as hell and he feels kind of like someone’s watching him. It’s a terrifying feeling and he feels around for his keys in his pocket as he picks up his pace, can hear his feet on the walking path so loudly in his own ears, his teeth almost chattering with the temperature and it’s not right. 

Something is not right. 

A hand wraps itself around his wrist and he almost screams. Would have if not for the hand that comes up and claps over his mouth, stopping him from making a sound. He struggles for only a moment before a pair of glowing amber eyes come into his line of sight and he thinks he might just pass out instead. 

He’s thrown back against a tree and even though the person holding him back is tiny, truly he’s unbelievably small with sharp, small features, catlike eyes and wavy blond hair, he manages to pin Johnny to the tree without effort. Johnny realizes that he’s off the walking path here and he doesn’t know this person and even though his heart is beating double time in his chest he can’t move.

“Johnny, right?” He asks as though he doesn’t actually know and Johnny considers screaming again. “Oh Gods, answer me.” Johnny nods despite better judgment and the man’s shoulders slump. “Good. Be quiet.” As if Johnny was speaking to begin with and the man looks around the tree, as though he’s expecting something to be near them. His eyes are still a strange glowing amber and Johnny feels like he’s seen something like that before but his mind is static and he can’t recall where. 

“Gimme your hand,” the man instructs, letting go of Johnny’s wrist to take his hand in his instead. “Now whatever you do, don’t let go.” 

Johnny feels his ear pop, squeezes his eyes shut and almost bites his tongue with how quickly he clenches his teeth. There’s a terrible feeling in his gut, like he’s on a high rollercoaster but mixed with nausea and he isn’t sure he isn’t gonna throw up. There’s a moment where he doesn’t think he’s even touching the ground anymore but it lasts as long as a blink before he’s tripping over his feet. 

He and the man whose hand he’d been holding both go tumbling to the ground. The hand over his mouth falls away and they both topple over into grass, too tall, tall enough that Johnny can’t see over it on the ground. The man lands next to him and he lets go of Johnny’s hand as he lands on his backside. Johnny shakes his head, trying to get his bearings back. 

“Ten!” A voice shouts and Johnny pushes himself up into a sitting position. It’s hard, even sitting upright, for him to see over the grass, but a figure comes into focus and Johnny can’t even believe it. “Ten!” He shouts against and the man next to Johnny groans as he pushes himself to his feet. 

“Yeah, yeah,” the man, Ten Johnny assumes, says, brushing himself off. “I brought your human. Close call too,” he says, walking through the grass. The figure comes closer and he crouches a bit to look Johnny in the eyes as Ten walks away from them. 

“Sorry about him,” Kun says. “Let me help.” 

Johnny takes Kun’s hands and Kun helps him to his feet. Johnny wobbles for a moment before he finds his footing and Kun gives him a sheepish smile. 

“What just happened?” Johnny asks and Kun merely sighs. 

“C’mon, I’ll explain inside,” Kun tells him and Johnny can do little else than follow Kun towards the house. The only house way out here, it seems, as when Johnny looks around he sees nothing but tall grass everywhere around them. 

The door is ajar and the house is barely more than a cottage, he notices. It’s pitch black outside and Johnny spares a look to the sky when he gets to the door but he doesn’t see anything in the sky. Nothing but empty blackness that continues all around them as far as the eye can see. Not even stars. It’s unsettling. 

The house is cozy, warm, and Ten, again Johnny can only assume his name is Ten, is sitting in the sitting room, wrapped in a blanket. There are two other people inside and Johnny feels very strange, suddenly being in the middle of nowhere with someone he is only awkwardly acquainted with and three strangers. Kun pays it no mind though, closes the door gently behind Johnny and waves him to the sitting room. One of the three rooms Johnny can see in the tiny cottage.

“Sicheng made tea, if you’d like some,” Kun offers and Johnny lifts a brow but follows Kun’s vague instructions to sit in the sitting room. He settles down on the opposite side of the couch as Ten and gets a teacup of tea placed in front of him by a tall man, maybe only a little shorter than him with sweet if sharp features, cheeks rounded as he smiles awkwardly, something small that doesn’t reach his eyes, and short navy blue hair. A boy, he looks about the same age as Johnny’s half brother’s boyfriend, sits in a chair in the corner, silver hair falling in his eyes, legs pulled up so his feet are on the cushion with him. 

“Don’t sit like that, Yangyang,” Kun scolds the boy and the boy huffs but drops his feet onto the floor. “Sorry about him,” Kun apologizes.

“Uhm… not to be rude, but where am I?” Johnny asks and Kun clears his throat, avoiding his eyes. 

“A safe house. Sorry to be so abrupt but it was… imperative,” Kun says and Johnny lifts a brow. “I’m sorry. Sincerely, so sorry about all of this. I truly didn’t think they’d come after you.” 

“It’s like you don’t know what the council is like,” Yangyang, the boy, mumbles. “You speak to one human and suddenly you’re public enemy number one,” he comments. “I think we’re all lucky Irene chose wraiths and not something worse.” 

“Did you say wraiths?” Johnny asks, eyes widening in fear. “I may not know my mythology that well but what the fuck?” He says, looking at Kun. 

“Oh, he’s aware,” Ten comments mildly, taking a sip of his own tea. “Got yourself a smart one, Kunnie.” 

“That’s not helpful,” Kun scolds Ten before sitting on the edge of the coffee table in front of Johnny. “I really thought they wouldn’t come after you,” He says, turning his attention back to Johnny. “No matter what Yangyang says, the council is, above all, lazy. Setting aside the resources to attack a human-” 

“Poor taste if you ask me,” the last man interrupts and Johnny hasn’t seen anyone else so he guesses this might be Sicheng? His voice is deeper than Johnny expected but it’s got a warm lilt to it. He sits in the other chair in the room, holding his own tea between his hands. “Waste of time. If I was still on it, we wouldn’t have.” 

“You know Joy, she’s full of evil intent and rage, above all else,” Ten says. “Doesn’t surprise me none. I agree with Yang, we’re just lucky we got there in time.” 

“None of you are being very useful right now,” Kun says to the room as a whole. He turns back to Johnny then, who tangles his fingers in his lap rather than do anything else. He’s pretty sure he’d just drop the cup if he tried to pick it up. Kun rests a gentle hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry. As soon as I knew, I sent Ten. I’m glad he got to you in time.”

“And if he hadn’t?” Johnny asks. Kun’s eyes shift around nervously and Johnny’s eyes drop to where he knows Kun’s cuts had been the last he knew. “That’s what hurt you when I found you? A wraith?” 

“Nasty, aren’t they?” Kun comments. “That’s why I brought you here. They can only exist within the realm they’ve been unleashed in and they can only exist for a set period. No more than six hours. They don’t usually need it but if you’re here, they can’t get you. We’ll send you home as soon as the coast is clear.” 

“Will they be back?” Johnny asks and Kun chews on his lower lip. “They will, won’t they?” 

“I don’t know,” Kun answers honestly. “Like I said, the council is lazy. If they don’t get you the first run, they’ll give up… usually,” he mutters the last word and Johnny sighs, eyes lifting to the ceiling. 

“Jesus Christ,” he moans. “Why can’t my life be normal for more than five seconds?” 

“How do you know about them?” Ten asks and Johnny looks to him. He tilts his head at Johnny, eyes glittering amber before they become brown again. “Wraiths, I mean.” 

“My mother- my mother is a mythology and lore professor at a university,” Johnny says. “She’s always told me stories. Read me books when I was a kid, even gave me some when I moved out on my own. I read them sometimes,” Johnny explains. “I never thought this information would be so useful but-” 

“Your mother sounds wise. Wiser than most humans,” Sicheng (?) says. “Kun, have you considered-” 

“Don’t say it,” Kun stops him. “The last thing we need is the council getting some kind of wind of that rumor.” 

“What?” Johnny asks. “What is it?” 

“Kun doesn’t want to say that he thinks your mother might be a resident of the in-between that gained mortality,” Yangyang says and Kun sighs deeply. “It’s not easy, doing that, but it’s not impossible. And if it’s true-” 

“If it’s true, we’re all in trouble because in case any of you forgot, that’s illegal,” Kun points out. He gives Johnny the saddest look he’s seen Kun sport yet, which is impressive. “There’s not proof that your mother is something from our realm and it’s silly to suggest it. Not only is it illegal to go around the rules and use magic and become a mortal but it’s also illegal to have children with mortals. If she is one, it’s best none of us know to begin with.” 

“And me?” Johnny asks. 

“You?” Kun asks in reply. 

“What about me?” 

“Technically you’d be a child of the in-between,” Ten says, sipping his tea. “You’d have to be recognized by the council, which will never happen, but if you were, you could reside here and the mortal realm. Very prestigious honor.” 

“Why is it illegal?” 

“It was outlawed some 20 years ago, when Irene possessed a chair,” Sicheng, Johnny still doesn’t know, says. “Irene has been slowly returning all our laws back to the dark ages ever since she took actual power, and banishing whoever doesn’t agree. Hence, why I’m here,” he says with a sharp grin. It’s jagged and bitter and still doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Sicheng was part of the council for a long time,” Kun explains. Aha! Sicheng. Johnny was right. Wait, over 20 years ago? This guy looks younger than Johnny. “He was a favorite among the community. When Irene took favor… things changed.” He sighs deeply then shakes his head. “Not that any of this matters, this is all conjecture. What matters is that you will stay here for a few hours. We have a friend in the mortal realm, he’ll let us know when it’s clear for you to go home.” 

“And that will be…” Johnny inquiries. 

“A few hours yet. Get comfortable,” Yangyang suggests. 

It’s difficult, Johnny finds, to get comfortable here. It’s the dead of night back home and he lives on his own so it’s not like any of his friends will notice he’s missing but it’s still odd. He finds himself pacing the length of the sitting room and then the kitchen and then he steps out when he feels like he can’t breathe in such a tiny, enclosed area with the eyes of a bunch of people he doesn’t know to watch him. 

He walks around the house, the house that he thinks looks no larger than a shed but clearly is big enough to hold five people inside. It’s unsettling, everything about this is unsettling and he sits on the ground when he feels his heart rate ratchet up in his chest. This is truly the last thing he needs, a panic attack in the middle of nowhere surrounded by people he doesn’t know. 

“You seem anxious,” Kun says and Johnny huffs a hysterical laugh. “I’m sorry,” Kun apologizes, sitting on the ground with him. “I really, really never meant for any of this to happen. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.” 

“Not that I don’t appreciate you keeping me out of harm’s way and everything,” Johnny says. “But I still have so many questions. What are you, where am I, what if I am a child of the in-between, what is my mom, am I gonna be followed for the rest of my life?” The questions burst out of him like a broken pipe and he heaves a great sigh. “Kun, I don’t regret helping you. I want you to know that, but what the fuck did I sign up for when I did.” 

“Nothing,” Kun says. “You didn’t sign up for anything. And I think, at this point, you deserve to know the truth,” Kun admits. “So whatever you want to know, you can ask me.” 

“Literally anything,” Johnny admits, still feeling hysteric. He looks at Kun and Kun looks sheepish in the yellow light cast from the cottage behind them. Gone are social cues and thoughts of what is and isn’t a question he can ask because he feels like he hasn’t been able to get his feet underneath him since coming into his apartment and finding Kun on the floor of his living room. Everything feels like he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop and it’s one of the most terrifying things, like he’s standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff waiting for it to fall apart underneath him. “If you could tell me anything about this, this place, you, what the fuck is going on, I’d love to know,” he sighs, arms wrapped around his knees like a little kid.

“Well, I’m a sprite, I guess that’s the right term if it were to be translated. All of us are but we’re not the only thing that lives here,” Kun begins. “It’s a long, long explanation but generally, anything that’s not dead but not mortal lives here. That’s why it’s called the in-between. All of us are sprites, me and my friends,” Kun explains, “and all of us are banished.” 

“Banished?” Johnny asks, brow furrowed. 

“The council banished us from the city several years back. We’re not forced out here but we frequent this place. It’s one of the only safe places we have. The council has ears everywhere so we stay out here if we ever want to talk freely.” 

“Are they… a tyranny?” Johnny asks. 

“Not technically and I assure you, for all the years they’ve been in charge, their days are numbered. We may not be at the front lines anymore but there’s descention in the ranks. I don’t fear for the realm, I fear for the council,” Kun admits. Johnny wonders briefly if he accidentally walked into a civil war of sorts. “It’s one of the reasons they were after me. My name is still spoken in the streets even if I’m not there speaking it.” 

“That must be scary,” Johnny says but Kun merely shrugs. 

“Someone has to light a fire underneath Irene and if it’s me, so be it,” Kun says. “I can only imagine that’s why she’s after you, to get to me.” 

“You don’t know me,” Johnny points out. 

“She doesn’t know that. If her ears followed me into the mortal realm, she might’ve heard that I took shelter with you. I’m sorry that it came to this.” He looks into Johnny’s eyes then. “As for any questions about your mother, I don’t believe she’s anything more than a wise human, and I don’t just say that. I would’ve noticed something in you the moment I met you if you were more than human and you’re not.” 

“Gee thanks,” Johnny mumbles and Kun laughs softly. It’s a beautiful laugh.

“I thought you might be relieved.” 

“I am but… nothing quite like being told you’re nothing more than average by a supernatural creature,” Johnny says and Kun shakes his head. “So you think this will pass?” 

“I do. And I think Irene will grow bored of trying to hurt you very quickly. Ultimately, it’s me that she wants. Not you.” 

“What happens if she gets you?” Johnny asks. Kun shrugs his shoulders. 

“I don’t know. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” 

Johnny wakes up well past noon the next day, sitting up in bed, barely able to catch his breath. He still feels blurry and confused, like there’s some weird haze clinging to his skin, like smoke or humidity that hasn’t evaporated yet. He closes his eyes again and is able to remember everything leading up to his return to his apartment. The strange little fox boy that Kun told him was his source in the mortal realm, the terrible nausea inducing return to the street in front of his apartment and the way time and space seemed to warp around Sicheng before he disappeared from sight when he brought Johnny home. He’s not entirely certain that he didn’t imagine them up, it was late when he left and the morning was shifting from black to navy to gray when he returned. 

“Let’s not meet like this again, okay?” Kun said before he let Sicheng take him away though and Johnny’s eyes snap back open. 

He can make up a lot of things, his imagination is vivid, but even he couldn’t make up the sincerity in Kun’s voice or the way he looked at Johnny if he tried. 

“I’m not even that good of a baker,” Johnny tells Doyoung over the phone as he upends his hamper to sort it into piles of lights, darks, whites, so on. He’s been neglecting his washing and just because he doesn’t have anything to be getting dressed for doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it. So he is and it’s a damn mess in here, he was really about to be on his last towel, wasn’t he?

“Says the man who made the best garlic and oregano focaccia I’ve ever tasted in my life, which if I don’t eat soon I will literally murder you for that recipe,” Doyoung warns. Johnny rolls his eyes, can hear the sound of a whisk swishing against the side of a metal bowl as Doyoung beats whatever it is he’s making into submission. “You know you can work here and you don’t even have to do that much baking, you can make coffee too. You’re the resident coffee freak in our friend group, you were born to work in a bakery, you just refuse to.” 

“Taeyong put you up to this, huh?” Johnny asks because he knows better. He knows Yong and Doie are just trying to be good friends and get him out of his unemployment funk but he truly doesn’t know that that’s what he wants. He has enough savings to last another month or so even after being out of a job for just over three months so if he looks at this like a vacation instead he might still be able to get some mileage out of this. 

“No!” Doyoung crows. “I’m doing this because I’m greedy and want to eat your bread,” he says and a laugh bursts out of Johnny. “But honestly, you really could do with getting another job and I don’t mean that because I think you’re a lazy, unemployed asshole because you choose to be. I say this because you’re sleeping poorly, your anxiety and insomnia are getting worse and you need to be around people. I’m worried about you and maybe working in a bakery isn’t the best thing in the world but it is a job, even if it is temporary.” 

“I’m doing alright,” Johnny says even though he knows it’s a lie. He’s been walking in circles and taking late night walks (less since the incident a couple of weeks ago, which it being a couple weeks since then actually makes him more nervous than he thought) and neglecting to clean his house and do his general washing up. It’s not healthy but he is trying to keep a regular routine, working out in the mornings and going for runs and taking his vitamins. But it isn’t enough and he knows that. 

“You say that,” Doyoung sighs at him. “Look, just come down to the bakery a day. Just a day, mess around in the kitchen for a little while, run a coffee machine, you might like it.” 

“If I do, will it get the two of you off my back?” He asks, throwing a pair of boxers into his laundry basket. Damn, he really was on his last legs in terms of clothing and he heaves the overflowing basket up onto his hip to carry it to his washer / dryer closet. 

“Not completely but it will help,” Doyoung tells him cheerily. “I’ll even make your favorite if you come down.” 

“That’s bribery!” Johnny shouts. It is but also Doyoung knows Johnny cannot resist when he makes him his chocolate cherry marble cheesecake. It’s a vastly unfair advantage but Johnny’s mouth is watering just thinking about it. 

“You bet it is,” Doyoung agrees. Johnny tosses his basket up onto his washer and sighs into the phone. He lifts a hand to move it from where it was wedged between his shoulder and cheek to hold onto it properly. 

“Fine. Is Thursday okay?” 

Doyoung agrees and Johnny can hear Taeyong cheering in the background. Letting Doyoung, Jaehyun and Taeyong all be in a relationship truly created a three-headed monster bent on making Johnny be the best person he could ever possibly be. He isn’t convinced they haven’t made him their little pet project of being their own personal Frankenstein monster. He loves them all to death but he also wonders what he did in a past life that gave him all three of them at the same time. 

He makes it through a wash, dry and fold of the first load before he starts getting tired of his chores. He’s found he gets exhausted a lot faster these days but he can only assume it’s the mental instability that’s doing it. It really drives him crazy that he’s so tired so much of the time but he can’t do anything about it except let it happen. At least his darks and jeans are done so he sits down on the floor of his bedroom and starts rifling through the books his mom has sent him. 

He wasn’t entirely truthful with Kun when he said he owns a few books. Most of the bottom shelf of his bookshelf are myth and lore and supernatural creature books. And he reads them more often than ‘sometimes.’ When he’s feeling especially down and out or tired or missing his mom more than he wants to admit, he goes through them. A good portion of them are actually college level class literature, books that have been retired from his mother’s class curriculum and without a reason to really keep them, she’ll send them to Johnny. He doesn’t read them for the college level content, he reads them because he finds the stories and conjecture about myth and magical creatures terribly interesting. 

There are a few story books wedged between the tombs on his shelf, of course, because he insisted he would bring them with him when he moved out of the country. They’re children’s books really, A to Z encyclopedias of fae folk and supernatural creatures that are meant to entertain kids below the age of 13. But he goes through them anyway, likes the little anecdotes the authors list that are entirely fake but adorable nonetheless. 

He has a handful of books on fae folk but just pulling them from his shelf he doesn’t think they’ll be very helpful. Just the font tells him that there will be next to nothing about eastern fae folk in those pages, descriptions of faeries all centered solidly around the idea from Celtic and other European legends and myths. They get stacked to the side and he tugs a book on Asian-Pacific folktales and legends from between a couple of textbooks. 

He only gets a few pages into a piece about something that could maybe be kind of like whatever Kun, sprawled on his floor with the book aloft above his face, when he hears frantic knocking at the door. He lowers his book a little, turning his head to view his bedroom doorway. The knocking disappears almost as soon as it begins and Johnny turns onto his side, lowers the book to the floor and faces the doorway entirely. It doesn’t begin again and he hesitantly begins turning back onto his back when it happens. 

Space and time stretches around nothing at all, thin air and then three people are stumbling through the doorway of his bedroom. The three of them fall to the ground immediately and Johnny flings his book in his rush to get to his feet. He only makes it to his knees, reaching out to who landed closest to him, resting a hand on their shoulder as they try to catch their breath, down on their hands and knees. 

“Help,” they gasp, lifting their head to look him in the eye. It’s Yangyang, and his hair is almost white in the bright light of his bedroom. It’s a shocking thing to look at, the way his eyes glimmer strangely and his wings shift below his jacket. He looks exhausted and Johnny looks him over once more, not able to discern any injuries before his eyes swing to look at the others with him. 

One is splayed on their back, chest rising and falling rapidly, cotton candy pink hair splayed on the floor. Johnny doesn’t recognize him as one of the men from the house before but his heart nearly stops in his chest when he sees the last form with them, lying on his front, stock still. His hair is different, a strange blue-green shade, like seafoam and edging even further into silver, like it’s barely holding onto color at all. Johnny reaches for him, turns him over onto his back and wishes he was wrong, just once. 

He’s breathing but his chest rises and falls shallowly. He’s holding onto his stomach though his arm is lax now that he’s lying down. He looks paler than ever and Johnny reaches out, runs a hand over his forehead, his cheek, finds him warm but clammy to the touch. 

“He’s bleeding,” Yangyang finally says. “It’s bad. Dejun and I can get him on the bed but we need something to stop the bleeding.” 

Johnny gets up off the floor and runs for his bathroom. He’s never been more thankful that he’s run his laundry. Distantly, he hears Yangyang and who he can only assume is Dejun, he really wishes these people would introduce themselves before throwing themselves bodily at him, struggling to move Kun. He’s probably pretty close to dead weight the way he’s passed out and Johnny wets a washcloth and grabs a second towel before leaving the bathroom. 

Between the three of them, Johnny doing most of the heavy lifting, they manage to wedge one of the towels underneath him and Yangyang presses the cool washcloth to Kun’s forehead. Johnny presses the towel down on the three long gashes across his abdomen and truly wishes he didn’t know what made those. 

They bleed for a long time, so long that it begins to seep through the towel and onto Johnny’s hand. He pulls his hand back when he releases it’s wet and finds his fingers coated in a thin sheen of silver. It has the same finish as if he had dipped his hand into lip gloss, drying quickly and tacky onto his hand. He tries not to think too hard about it, retrieves another towel and presses it down again, hopes that they stop bleeding soon. Kun continues to breath as Yangyang wipes at his brow and their companion attempts to regain his breath, hands on his knees next to Johnny’s desk. 

“You gonna be okay?” Johnny asks after a period of time and he glances over his shoulder as Dejun straightens up, hands on his hips and swallows roughly. 

“Kun ge’s, uh, a lot heavier than you think when he’s not uh… pulling his own weight, y’know?” He comments and Johnny lifts a brow. This kid must be pretty weak because he certainly didn’t have any problems picking Kun up on his own. 

“We were also running for quite a distance,” Yangyang comments softly. “Sorry to show up like this, we just- we didn’t know where else to go.” 

“Oh, no, please, make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa, just a regular gathering ground for fae folk, totally fine,” Johnny comments softly. Kun groans softly and Yangyang runs the washcloth over his forehead again. “What happened?” Johnny asks, finally. 

“Irene happened,” Yangyang murmurs. “Irene is getting desperate, she’s sending out everything and anything to take us out. She knows she’s losing ground in this fight and if we persist, she won’t win. I think getting Kun is her last ditch effort to retain some kind of power over the realm. It won’t work, killing him will only incite chaos, anarchy, she won’t like what comes of it. Kun keeps them organized, willing to fight for a cause, without him… I worry what might happen to the realm.” 

It’s an abstract concept, seeing a fight, a war, from a singular side where he doesn’t even have all of the facts but it becomes clear in the way Yangyang speaks that Kun is more important than Johnny could ever imagine. An activist, a leader, a crucial part in a very big fight that Johnny can’t even begin to wrap his mind around. He has stumbled into something far bigger than himself but in the scheme of his life and where he stands, none of that matters. What matters is that Kun matters to someone other than him and if the least he can do is keep Kun alive, that’s good enough for him. 

“Where’s the breaking point of this house?” Dejun asks and Johnny whips his head around to look at him. 

“Uh…” 

“The central position of this home,” Yangyang says. “A main room, if you will.” 

“I guess… the living room?” Johnny says, unclear at the point of his question. 

“Take me there?” Dejun asks. Johnny glances at Yangyang, who nods. Johnny sighs and gets to his feet, waving for Dejun to follow him. It’s a short trek, from his bedroom to the living room and he waves a hand around the room. “Is there a… central point to the room?” He asks and Johnny gestures vaguely to the coffee table. 

“Probably there. It’s in the very middle of the room.” 

Dejun walks over to it and pulls something out of his jacket. For a moment, it just looks like a decently sized crystal, one of those over-priced witchy things you get at conventions or specialty shops. It’s black in color, mildly unsettling, unevenly shaped with rounded edges and Dejun sets it in the very middle of the table. The stone glows deep from within for just a moment before it stops and Johnny looks between it and Dejun for a moment before Dejun walks back to his side. 

“Do yourself a favor, and don’t move that,” Dejun tells him. 

“Great, I can’t wait to tell my friends I have overpriced paper weight decor in my living room now,” Johnny comments. Dejun rolls his eyes but doesn’t retort, instead walking back to the bedroom. Johnny stays in his living room for a moment. He considers if he can get away with putting a pile of magazines, newspapers or junk mail under it so it at least looks like it has a purpose but ultimately decides against it and goes back to his bedroom. 

When he returns, Kun’s eyes are open. They’re bleary and unfocused, much like the first time he was in Johnny’s home but his gaze falls on Johnny shortly. It lasts only for a moment before he tips his head back and into the pillow. He’s holding the towel against his own side now and Yangyang still has the washcloth against his forehead. Dejun is kneeling by his side now and Johnny walks up to him, hands in his pockets. Kun’s eyes slide over to look at him from his periphery before focusing on the ceiling again. 

“What was that commentary you made last time?” Johnny says softly, teasingly. “Ah, yes, not meeting like this again. Right. This time… not my fault.” 

“None of the times were your fault,” Kun points out mildly. “Not at all. And I’m sorry I keep showing up and causing you problems.” 

“I mean, I’m unemployed, what else am I really doing?” Johnny jokes and Kun turns his head slightly to look at him. “How do you feel?” He asks. 

“Like something just tried to literally tear my innards out,” he says. He struggles to push himself up into a sitting position, Yangyang and Dejun reaching out to help him. The washcloth lands on the bed and Kun peels the towel away from his side. “Sorry I’m ruining all your towels,” Kun says, folding the towel to toss it to the end of the bed. 

“There are worse things,” Johnny says. “Let me get you a new shirt.” 

“I still have your old one,” Kun points out but Johnny pays him no mind as he pulls a button down out of his closet. It’s soft and cotton and has a weird spotty pattern that could almost be floral if you unfocused your eyes enough. Kun takes it gingerly and Yangyang helps him remove his jacket and shirt. His wings flutter softly and Johnny has a hard time looking away from them. Even they look like they’re changing color, a little more muted than before. It sparks something nervous in Johnny’s chest even though he has literally no godly idea just what any of that might mean. 

His shirt is ruined, again, and Johnny disappears to get him a glass of water, filled with ice. He juggles three of them because he thinks the others might want one too and sets them all on his bedside table, getting a little smile out of Dejun and the slightest tilt to the corner of Yangyang’s lips in return. Yangyang doesn’t seem easy to please and even harder to put in a good mood so Johnny takes this as a win. 

“Have you said anything?” Kun asks and Johnny lifts a brow. He’s looking directly at Yangyang and Dejun though so Johnny thinks this might not be a conversation he should be privy to.

“We thought you might want to do it,” Dejun says in reply. His eyes dart to Johnny though and it makes Johnny nervous. Now he knows they’re talking about him and that’s… unsettling. 

“Right,” Kun sighs. “Do you mind?” 

Yangyang and Dejun leave his side and Johnny turns to Kun then. They shut the door behind them and as uncomfortable as Johnny feels knowing that there are two fae just wandering around his apartment completely unsupervised, the apprehensive look on Kun’s face makes him more so. He tugs his desk chair over and sits in front of Kun like he did all those weeks ago and Kun twists his fingers in his lap awkwardly. Johnny waits as he gathers his thoughts. 

“I’m so sorry,” he begins and Johnny’s shoulders drop from where they were threatening to rise all the way up to his ears. “I feel like as many times as I’ve said it, it’ll never be enough. I’ve done more than enough to you and yet I’m about to sit here and ask for so much more.” Johnny leans forward and rests his hand over Kun’s and Kun offers him a sad little smile. 

“What is it?” 

“I need help,” he says. “More help than I ever thought. This time… it was close. It was so close and if it wasn’t for Yangyang and Dejun I don’t know if I would’ve made it.” Johnny tightened his fingers around Kun’s hand and Kun turns his hand over to squeeze them back. “You know I- you don’t,” he falters. “You don’t know at all but I assure you, I would never ask for anything if it wasn’t my last resort. I would never do anything like this unless I truly needed it and even as I say it, you shouldn’t feel like you have to do anything for me. Like I’ve said, you’ve done so much more than enough for me. And if you say no-” 

“You still haven’t told me what it is,” Johnny says, interrupting gently. Kun huffs a sigh, looks down at his lap for a moment before his eyes lift again. 

“Johnny. She’s trying to kill me. I need somewhere to hide, just for a short while. I know I’m asking a lot but-” 

“You need to stay here,” He finishes. Kun’s eyes fall again. “Isn’t that dangerous, for me and for you? I mean, besides the fact that this woman seems more than willing to attack me to get to you, what about you? You said you can’t stay here, and if someone sees you-” 

“I will, inevitably, have to go back,” Kun explains slowly. “I can’t stay here indefinitely but the length of time is fluid. If necessary, I could stay here for years, though I assure you that won’t be the case. In terms of someone seeing me, I wouldn’t ever have to leave your apartment and even if I did I think I pull off human quite well, don’t you?” He tries for a joke and Johnny huffs a laugh in response.

Kun is ethereally beautiful. He looks like something out of this world to Johnny but he supposes he could just be a handsome person. And with the trends of coloring your hair weird colors, if he wears a long jacket, it might actually work. Not that Johnny has any intentions of taking him out and showing him around if he does stay here, that seems all the more dangerous. 

If. God, Johnny already knows he’s going to say yes. He already knows he’s going to give Kun his trundle bed and as much room as he can manage in his tiny one bedroom apartment. It’s stupid and dangerous and Kun still hasn’t explained how exactly he’s going to hide out here from Irene and not tip her off (he has a feeling it has something to do with that weird stone) but he’s going to say yes. He’s going to let Kun hide here because he’s an idiot and too good of a person for his own good. 

“It’s okay if you say no,” Kun says then, face falling a bit. “It’s okay if you don’t want me here. You should always look out for yourself first and if you think it’s too dangerous, I understand. You don’t have to-” 

“I’m going to let you stay here,” Johnny interrupts and Kun’s mouth closes in the middle of a word. “It’s not a very big apartment, I’m sure you’ve noticed. I have a trundle bed and we’ll have to bunk in this room together but… if this is what you need. You can stay here.”

“Are you certain?” Kun asks. 

“I am. You’ve already bled all over my belongings so how much worse can actually living with you be?” he teases and Kun’s lips split into a beautiful grin. “If this keeps you safe, you can stay as long as you like.” 

“I hope it won’t be long,” he says. “For you and me.” 

The first couple of days are… weird, to say the least. The constant state of Kun’s friends snapping in and out of existence in Johnny’s apartment makes the air feel weird and kind of makes him feel like time and space are going to break any second. It lasts for a few days and when Thursday stumbles around Taeyong all but yells at him down the phone that he promised to come down to the bakery. Johnny doesn’t remember the word ‘promise’ coming out of his mouth but he agrees anyway, getting dressed in proper clothes for what might be the first time since losing his job and freezes halfway to the door when he remembers there are still fairy folk, or an approximation of such, in his apartment.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Johnny says and Kun looks up at him from where he’s sitting on the living room couch, tilting his head. Ten and Dejun are with him, muttering to themselves and pay Johnny absolutely no mind but that’s pretty par for the course as it seems. “I’m gonna lock the door. Don’t uh… don’t do anything that’s gonna get you seen by my neighbors.” 

“I got it,” Kun assures him with a little smile. “Have a nice time.” 

He doesn’t know how comfortable he feels about the very idea of not being in his home while there are other people, or creatures, in it, but he did tell Doyoung he was gonna do this and if he doesn’t show up he’s not gonna have a good excuse as to why. Well, it might be a good excuse but he’s pretty sure if he tells Doie about the winged people in his apartment his friends might actually have him committed. 

The bakery is warm and smells like bread, like it always does. It’s actually a pretty welcome to change to the constant walls of his apartment or the panic inducing things that have been happening at sporadic instances in the last few months. Everyone in the shop looks perfectly normal and Jeno is standing at the register again, leaning on the counter with his books open in front of him. Oh Jesus, it’s already September, kids are in school now. 

“Hey, hyung!” Jeno greets him when he glances up from his books. “Yong and Doie hyungs told me to send you to the back when you come in today,” he tells him and Johnny snorts. Of course they did. 

“Thanks, kid,” he says. He ruffles the brown hair on the top of his head and Jeno gives him his trademark eye smiles before turning back to his books. It’s a Thursday so it’s quiet in the bakery, one of the reasons Johnny suggested he come in on his day and it affords Jeno a lot of time to get his studies done. Doyoung would do nothing short of literally anything in the world for Jaehyun’s younger brother so he’s glad this job is giving him both a good work environment and the chance to get his degree. 

The kitchen is busy, as usual. It’s even warmer back here, almost uncomfortably but that doesn’t surprise him. He hasn’t spent a lot of time back here but he’s been in and out a decent amount of times so he knows that there’s always an oven going, Taeyong and Doyoung and Jaemin rushing back and forth back here. He leans around a shelving unit to try and spot one of them, getting a peek of Taeyong’s red hair over the top of a table. That’s a recent change, he considers. 

Walking around the unit, he wanders up to the edge of the table and raps on it gently with his knuckles. Taeyong jumps, clutching his chest with wide eyes before his expression melts into one of recognition and then minor irritation. He reaches across the table to shove his best friend’s shoulder and Johnny laughs softly. He’s left a white handprint on the black hoodie Johnny’s wearing, his fingers still coated in a fine layer of flour. 

“Change out of that thing and grab an apron, we’re making soft pretzels,” Taeyong tells him, waving a hand towards the door. Johnny glances back and spots the nook next to the door. There’s their omnipresent extra apron hanging there, complete with the TY Cookies logo in neon pink as well as all the baker’s bags and jackets. It’s only going to be a short period before those all get changed out for coats and Johnny reaches for the hem of his hoodie to tug it up and off while Taeyong starts gathering things to clutter the once clean and empty table. 

For being a professional bakery, Taeyong has certainly managed to keep the place incredibly homey. There are metal, rolling shelves stacked with cupcake tins and baking sheets, hanging hooks of cooking utensils, the kind of things you see in industrial kitchens as well as the massive ovens they have to house everything. But the stoves are still gas powers, click loudly when you turn them on and all the work tables are finished wood, a light maple just the right side of ashy beige that makes the kitchen look light and airy with the way the gauzy white curtains over windows above the sink and at the back of the shop sway in the breeze. 

Johnny dons the white apron over his graphic tee and comes back over as Taeyong throws a heaping helping of dough down on the lightly floured work bench. 

“Help me with this, I have way too much dough,” he says. Johnny sighs but washes his hands before joining his friend at the table. The dough is soft and malleable in his hands and he knows how to do this. He and Taeyong used to do this when Taeyong was still trying to figure out all the items he wanted to list on his menu. Johnny refused to teach him his focaccia recipe but he can tell this dough is already laced with herbs and he finds routine in the way he folds the ropes of dough into pretty little knots. 

“How are things,” Taeyong says after a period of time and Johnny sighs. 

What a loaded question. 

“Okay,” Johnny finally says. “I must be worrying you, huh?” 

“Okay, first of all, you’re my best friend in the whole goddamn world, I’m going to be worried about you regardless so you being out of a job and loafing around is not the problem here,” Taeyong points out and Johnny huffs a laugh at him with a grin. “I just think it’s silly that you’re not going to take my suggestion seriously. You’re great in a kitchen and it doesn’t even have to be a permanent solution. I just think that not having a job is hurting you worse than you think it is.” 

And Johnny knows this. He knows he’s in a slump and that might be why he’s making reckless decisions. Getting laid off from his job fucking sucked but at the end of the day, he didn’t really like that job very much. Sitting in a cubicle, running sales reports for hours on end, just to get yelled at if a sales report, that he didn’t even have control over, didn’t meet standard. “Downsizing,” they said but Johnny is still pretty sure they were just looking for any reason at all to cut costs so even as he packed up the meager things in his cubicle, he wasn’t surprised. And for all the talent and skills and work experience he has he still hasn’t been hired by anyone and he’s starting to think it’s happening for a reason. 

“I am taking it seriously,” Johnny says eventually and Taeyong perks up a bit. “Don’t get like that. I haven’t even said whether or not I’m going to agree to anything yet,” he says. Taeyong harrumphs under his breath and Johnny chuckles. “You know I hated that job, right?” 

“I know,” Taeyong says. “I know you did. Which is why I don’t think you should go looking for another one just like it. You have a lot of great skills, Johnny, and passions and going back to an office just doesn’t suit you.” 

He’s starting to feel that way too. 

Taeyong blesses him with dropping the subject not long after and he packs up the pretzels to take them over to the stove. The water isn’t boiling yet but it’s close and Johnny continues with the dough while Taeyong checks the temperature of the water and waits. The dough is down to the final scraps by the time Taeyong’s done dunking them in water and putting the first sheet in the oven. Johnny makes a tiny pretzel in the shape of a heart and tells Taeyong to be careful because it has to look like a heart when it’s done baking too. 

Taeyong reveals the cheesecake Doyoung bribed Johnny with and cuts them both entirely too big slices and they sit at the counter next to the sink under the window eating them with black tea. The breeze sliding through the window is crisp and just warm enough to not be uncomfortable. It’s definitely a sign that fall is coming whether they like it or not and Johnny turns his face into the sun, smiling a small delighted thing as he closes his eyes. 

“You look like a cat,” Taeyong comments mildly, cutting a piece of cheesecake off with his fork.

“Maybe I was a cat in a past life,” he replies, opening his eyes to view his best friend. Taeyong lifts a brow at him, not convinced. “You don’t know me.” 

“We both know that’s not true,” he says mildly, sticking the bite of cheesecake in his mouth. Johnny laughs softly as he picks his own slice apart into bite size pieces. “I love you, you big idiot. Please think about it.” 

“I will. I mean it, I will,” Johnny assures him. “I just need… some time. Is that okay?” 

“Always,” Taeyong agrees. “Come down more, though, I miss your face all the time and then Doie complains that that’s all I talk about and ‘aren’t Jae and I enough’ which is entirely unfair, I live with him and Jaehyun is always at our apartment,” he commentates and Johnny grins at his friend as he complains about the woes of his triad. “They’re my boyfriends, it’s not the same.” 

“I know,” Johnny placates. “I will. I love you too, by the way.” 

“You better,” he grumbles and Johnny shakes his head to himself, turning his face back towards the window.

He’s only in the shop for a couple of hours but it’s a good couple of hours. He feels recharged, energized just from being around the person who he’s pretty sure might just be his platonic soulmate. Doyoung skids into the kitchen an hour into his being there, scolds him for being a recluse and then awkwardly hugs him. Johnny picks him entirely off the ground and he groans about it the whole time he’s off the ground. Jaehyun peers in through the door and he knows this was a trap then. 

“Just invite Yuta next time!” He crows while Taeyong bags up soft pretzels for Johnny to take for the road. They’re still warm, laced with rosemary and basil and Johnny thinks he still has that bougie horseradish mustard in his fridge to eat them with. Hopefully that’s still good. Then he wonders if the others are still in and suggests to Taeyong that he give him a couple more to keep in his cupboard at home if he ever gets peckish. 

By the time he actually leaves he promises to come back next week, he has a third of a cheesecake, half a dozen oversized soft pretzels and an Americano to-go. His friends know him far too well but he doesn’t think he’s laughed this much in well over three months. 

When he returns home no one is sitting in the living room but he can hear murmuring coming from the bedroom. He chooses to bypass that entirely because for all that Kun is literally going to be living in his apartment for an undetermined amount of time, he knows when a conversation isn’t his to enter. He manages to get through most of putting things away, his Americano condensating a puddle on his kitchen counter, when the door opens. It only reveals Kun so whomever he was speaking with must’ve evaporated while in the room and Kun looks immensely tired where he’s leaning on the doorframe. 

“Everything alright?” Johnny asks, leaning on the kitchen counter. 

“Yeah,” he says but it isn’t convincing. “How were things at the bakery?” He asks in return, coming closer. 

“Fine,” Johnny replies. “Taeyong forced food upon me so there’s soft pretzels and a third of a cheesecake in the refrigerator. I don’t know what kind of food you like but… it’s there.” 

“What kind of cheesecake?” Kun asks and Johnny reaches over to retrieve it dramatically, making Kun laugh. 

They build a routine together quickly and Johnny kind of likes it. The way he wakes up and there’s someone else in the apartment other than himself. He almost bought a dog in the first month and a half he was on his own and he’s glad he didn’t but this is infinitely better anyway. They move around each other in the kitchen, the living room, Johnny lying on the floor with a book while Kun roots around for something he may want to read. 

Johnny gave Kun free range of his reading collection and he discovers that Kun finishes books incredibly fast, faster than what should be physically possible. He can work his way through a college level textbook in a singular day and when Johnny asks him about it he can recite individual anecdotes from it. It’s strange as hell but also very interesting, and he enjoys the way Kun gets a giggle out of the ridiculous things humans think about magic creatures. 

“I haven’t seen a unicorn in over a century,” Kun says conversationally over coffee. Johnny lifts a brow because even though he started the conversation he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Don’t get me wrong, they existed, they're just another creature that’s been poached to death. Pity, really.” 

“So humans aren’t the only creatures who have a tendency towards greed,” he says and Kun shakes his head. 

“Unfortunately that seems to be a curse cast upon literally any creature capable of their own thought. Material wealth is a plague and it’s something that persists.” 

Every few days one or two of Kun’s friends will pop in and they disappear into the bedroom for an extended period of time. Johnny will put in his headphones, lie back on his couch and read until they come back out. He doesn’t think they’re conversations he should know about or really concern himself with considering he doesn’t know how his input would be useful at all. The apartment remains intact and not a single creature other than a sprite shows up so it’s a small blessing. 

Ignorance isn’t a bliss but it’s close. 

Kun’s been in his apartment for just over two weeks when Johnny runs into Yuta in the bakery. “Runs into” isn’t really the term when he’s pretty sure Taeyong and Doyoung set this up, knowing Johnny’s been coming into the bakery and not been speaking with his friends while he’s been unemployed. Yuta is already sitting at a table near the front and calls out to Johnny the moment he steps in. 

“Hey, man,” Johnny sighs and Yuta tugs him into a hug. 

“Hey, dude, long time no see,” he says. Johnny can see a trap when it’s presented and sincerely doubts he’s going to get out of it so he sits down in the empty chair at Yuta’s table. 

It really has been a long time and that’s the worst part. Yuta is one of his best friends in the whole damn world, became as such when they were a couple of confused as fuck international students at the university that clung to Taeyong trying to wade their way through Korean and new classes and an entirely different country. The three of them have been nearly inseparable since then, especially since Johnny and Yuta decided to stay in the country for work. The three of them used to meet up regularly until Yuta started his job at the school, the girls’ footie coach at the local secondary school and Taeyong started the bakery and seeing Doyoung and Johnny got his shit job. The summer was usually when they would spend the most time together but this summer… it just didn’t happen. 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Johnny mumbles. An Americano lands on the table and Jeno winks before he walks away. Damn these kids. 

“Don’t be,” Yuta says, sincerely. “I know you’ve been going through some shit. I’m just glad you’re getting out again, Yong said you’ve been in and out of the bakery after he practically begged you so I figured this would be easier than dropping by the apartment unannounced.” 

He truly had no idea how poorly that could’ve gone. 

“Yeah, you know me. All this free time, we’re lucky I even do my laundry,” Johnny replies with a joke. Yuta snorts into his coffee. “How’s things?” Johnny asks. 

“Great!” Yuta says. “We got a lot of great new kids on the team, they’ve been really great to work with,” he says. And just like that, Johnny knows he’s going to have distracted Yuta for a full five to ten minutes because there’s nothing he’s more willing to talk about than his team. 

Yuta is a great coach, was a player when they were in uni and long, long before then as well. He’s always had a passion for the game and it’s sweet, the way his eyes light up when he talks about his players. He delves into some of the plays they’ve started working on and Johnny tries to keep up. He’s a bit of an amateur in comparison to Yuta but he can get a general grasp and Yuta really kicks it up when he starts talking about his returning players. He really cares about those girls and it’s cute the way he’ll hype them up. Johnny has been to a game or two and there’s nothing like the way Amber will stand on the sideline holding the clipboard while Yuta screams encouragement to his team. 

“C’mon Johnny,” he says when he starts tiring himself out on his tangent, “you know you can’t ask me that, I won’t stop.” 

“That was the plan,” Johnny replies and Yuta reaches over to shove his shoulder. “That’s good though, it sounds like your team is really coming along.” 

“They’re great girls,” he insists and Johnny believes it. “But what about you? I know you’ve been out since the beginning of summer but please tell me you haven’t been hiding in your apartment this whole time,” he says, giving Johnny big, pleading eyes. 

Technically, he hasn’t been. And especially lately but he doesn’t know how to tell one of his best friends he might’ve gotten himself involved in a magical war that he can’t fight in and is currently harboring a sprite that may or may not be a fugitive in his apartment. 

“Nah,” Johnny says. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading.” True.

“Has your mom been sending you those fairy tale books again?” Yuta asks. “No offense to your mom, I love her to death, possibly more than my own mom some days.” Johnny snorts into his coffee this time. “But you’re not actually reading a bunch of legends and shit are you? Doie said you’re not sleeping very well and you know weird shit like that can affect it-” 

“I’m not 13, Yuta, I can handle a scary story,” Johnny defends. If he’s been sleeping poorly it’s been for worse reasons than that. “And it’s not even scary shit, they’re just myths and stuff. Besides, you know they say myths and legends are based on true stories,” he points out. “They’re just embellished versions of them, made out to be bigger than life and most of those myths are just people of the olden days trying to find reasons for shit, like why the sun shines and why the tides change.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Yuta mumbles. “I’m just saying. You’re an adult now, you shouldn’t be filling your head with all those silly stories,” he comments. “They’ll melt your brain.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s video games, but sure,” Johnny comments mildly, getting an eye roll in reply. 

Yuta still has practice he has to get to so he dips around one and Johnny leaves not long later, just popping into the kitchen to check on the others. Jaemin grins at him from the work table and Doyoung tries to pawn a handful of cream puffs off on him. Johnny has more than enough baked goods from just the past couple of weeks in his apartment, denies him and leaves, telling them to have a good day. 

There’s something that seems off about his apartment when he returns. He closes and locks the door as he gets in and looks around. It’s not obvious, nothing right there in front of him but it’s like there’s a change in the air. Johnny steps into his apartment cautiously, setting his keys aside and toeing off his shoes before walking further in, calling out for Kun. 

“Are you here?” He asks. Something about the change makes him worried and he walks a little faster, only to be intercepted in the doorway of his bedroom. Kun looks up at him and Johnny catalogs quite a few things about him that look different than when he left. 

His cheeks are flushed and there’s a sparkly sheen to his skin. Johnny’s eyes travel over him slowly, from his face, dart to his hair, which was once almost silver now is a rainbow of bright pastels. His eyes are clear and bright and there’s a dewy glow to his skin that wasn’t there before. He can’t see his wings, which means he’s hiding them under his shirt and Johnny takes a step back. 

For the past week, Johnny has been quietly worrying about Kun’s health. Ever since he showed up he seemed to be getting paler every day. His hair was dulling as was the color of his wings, turning muted and white. Kun never seemed to be bothered by it, never said a thing and while Johnny would’ve liked to think it was because nothing was wrong he couldn’t help but think Kun wasn’t saying anything because he didn’t want to worry Johnny. Maybe his health was declining, an underlying condition he didn’t think he could tell Johnny about. 

And this, Kun looking fresh and new the moment Johnny returns from going out? It’s weird. Sets Johnny a bit on edge.

“You look different,” he comments and Kun nods. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?” 

“Uh, yes,” he says, hesitantly. “Uhm… it’s hard to explain so just uh… don’t go in your bathroom,” he says and Johnny lifts a brow. “I would love to tell you the truth but it’s pretty disgusting and I don’t know how you’re going to take it.” 

“Okay,” Johnny says slowly. “I’m going to check my bathroom,” he says and Kun’s eyes widen impossibly. 

“I really do not recommend that,” he says but he doesn’t stop Johnny when he steps back and goes for the bathroom door. “Johnny, I warned you,” he says even as Johnny pushes open the door. 

Johnny can admit he’s always been a little too curious for his own good. Could never leave well enough alone and he supposes that might be one of the reasons he’s in this mess to begin with. He only manages to push it open a little and glance inside before he snaps it shut again. Kun grimaces in the bedroom doorway and Johnny leans against the doorframe to his bathroom. Kun noticed he looks pale, a little green and he feels immensely bad for the mess he made in Johnny’s bathroom. 

“I…” Johnny starts. “Might throw up. What- I’m not mad,” he interrupts himself. “Swear I’m not, I just want to know, what happened to my bathroom?” He asks delicately. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I tried to contain it to the bathtub because I thought it would be easiest to clean and I promise I will clean it. This is very normal for me,” Kun insists and Johnny tilts his head, a crease in his brow as he views Kun for a long period. 

“Normal? This is a normal occurrence?” Kun nods once, still looking apprehensive. “Kun, I don’t mean to alarm you but if you weren’t standing in front of me, I might think you were murdered in my bathroom. There are things… happening in my bathroom, that are very unsettling.” He swallows before taking a deep breath. “If you could give me just like… a short essay on what happened while I was gone, that would be… great.” 

“Well,” Kun begins. “It’s hard to explain because I think a mortal equivalence is… molting.” 

There’s a part of Johnny that believes this, mostly because there seem to be a few things about Kun that don’t line up to being a human, namely his wings and the way his eyes shine. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this could be a thing it’s just… really unsettling to think about. Because that implies that the things in his bathroom are… 

“Are you trying to tell me you shed your skin on a regular basis?” Johnny asks because it feels like something he needs clarification on. 

“Approximately once every two years, give or take,” he admits.

“I need to sit down,” Johnny says. Kun slides out of his way to let Johnny into his bedroom. 

There is a period of time that follows afterward that Johnny is left to his own devices in his bedroom. He lies in his bed, thinks very hard about what exactly he might’ve just narrowed missed walking up on while Kun announces he’s going to clean the bathroom. Johnny doesn’t even reply, continues to question his life and his choices and how exactly any of this is real. 

An inestimable amount of time later, Kun returns as Johnny feels the bed dip next to him. He closed his eyes some time ago just to try and think through this. 

“I’m so sorry,” Kun says. “I truly didn’t think it would happen while I was here, it was a total accident.” 

“Is it always that messy?” Johnny asks. 

“Yes,” he admits. “It’s never very pretty either. I think it’s best that you were out while it was happening.” 

“I have so many questions,” Johnny mumbles. “But this explains so much at the same time. You have been looking rather pale.” 

“That’s a side effect,” he admits. “I start losing my color leading up to it. And as soon as it’s done I look like this,” he sighs, lifting a hand to run through his hair. Johnny opens his eyes to look. 

The particulars of this process are lost on him entirely but Kun does look different. He looks… almost younger in a way, brighter, more full of color in every way. His hair is sincerely eye catching the way it’s striped with pinks, purples, green and blues. His cheeks are flushed and his skin looks dewy, never mind the fact that there seems to be a fine coating of what looks like glitter all over him. His wings are out of sight but it makes Johnny want to know what they look like. 

“Is this what you normally look like, then?” Johnny asks and Kun shakes his head. 

“No, this is just what I look like afterward. My hair and wings can never decide what color they want to be until a few days later. First time I’ve ever looked so much like a rainbow before, though,” he says with a little smile. “I’m usually a much more neutral color.” 

“Pastels suit you,” Johnny says softly before sitting up. Kun huffs a laugh as he does so. Johnny looks him over then, eyes narrowing a bit as he takes him in. Kun doesn’t even move, letting him continue to look for as long as he likes, only reacting when Johnny lifts a hand to brush some of his hair from his eyes. “Sorry,” Johnny apologizes immediately. 

“No, it’s okay, you can touch. It’s just… might still be a little tacky.” 

“I’m glad you warned me but at the same time, I don’t know that I really wanted to know,” Johnny says and Kun grins at him. Johnny pushes Kun’s hair away from his face and finds it is damp to the touch. His hand trails down the side of Kun’s face, and cups the side of his neck. 

Kun jerks a little bit but doesn’t pull away as Johnny touches him. He is a little tacky, almost clammy but so warm underneath his hand. Johnny pulls his hand away but his eyes linger along his shoulder, and Kun glances back. 

“Did you… want to see them?” He asks gently. 

“Only if that’s okay,” he replies and Kun lifts his hands to unbutton the front of his shirt. Slowly, his naked torso comes into view and Johnny can recognize the scars across his collarbone, but as Kun pulls his shirt the rest of the way off he sees scars he doesn’t recognize. 

There’s a line of scars down the middle of his chest, vaguely reminding Johnny of impressions and there’s a clean edged cut high on his stomach. Lower down are the scars from the last attack, already almost completely healed. He can only assume there’s something about sprites that allows them advanced healing and when the shirt pools around his waist, he turns to show Johnny his wings. 

They’re just as stunning as the first time he saw them and they spread out beautifully. The thin translucent panels of them still shimmer like an oil slick, but this time they catch the light and reflect like a rainbow. The colors all blend together, shine almost holographic in that way. All four of them are fixed to the sides of his spine, thick knots of bone that are covered by thin skin that turns into the membrane like material that they’re made of. Light passes through them and paints his bed and floor in dancing rainbows and Johnny runs a finger along the top of one. 

Kun gasps softly but relaxes a moment later. Carefully, his fingers slide along the edge. They’re smooth to the touch, a little tacky like Kun’s skin had been and they flutter underneath his touch. It’s a strange feeling, almost like touching ultra thin camera film and he draws his hand back up, brushing his fingers against where they’re fixed to Kun’s back. 

“This is okay, right?” He checks and Kun hums, nodding. 

“It’s fine.” 

“What does it feel like?” 

“It’s really… I don’t know how to describe it to you,” he says and Johnny pulls his hand back. Kun turns back to him and his wings fold down along his back again. “The feeling is really… intense, I guess. Like when- like this.” 

Kun’s fingers wrap around the side of Johnny’s neck and his nerves prickle with sensation. His fingers drag down the side of his throat and along the front of it. It does feel intense, creates a sharp sensation of almost adrenaline that borders on pleasure, an anxious feeling of not knowing what’s about to happen. When he thinks about it, he thinks it might have something to do with someone putting their hand on something so fragile, so vital and vulnerable and trusting them to not hurt you. His hand falls away and Johnny swallows. 

Johnny’s ears pop and he winces, turning away from the sudden air pressure change. There’s a soft sound of fabric moving and then he turns his head, finds himself looking at Sicheng, standing in the bedroom doorway with raised brows. Kun is hastily buttoning his shirt and Johnny pushes himself further away from Kun, swings his legs over the edge of the bed and gets up. 

“I’ll let you two talk,” he says, walking out the door. Sicheng moves forward as Johnny steps out and Johnny shuts the door behind him. 

It’s well into the evening when Sicheng leaves, or at least Johnny assumes as much because Kun steps out of the bedroom looking rather cross and Sicheng is nowhere to be seen.

“Everything alright?” Johnny asks gently, pouring Kun a cup of tea. The corner of Kun’s lips tilt up a bit and Johnny slides it over to him, the tea bag still bobbing around in the hot water. Kun stands at the edge of the counter, wraps his hands around the cup and sighs. 

“I don’t want you to think Sicheng doesn’t like you,” Kun says and Johnny tilts his head. “It’s really not like that at all. In fact, it’s not that any of them don’t like you, it's just that… we’ve known each other a long time and as desperate as we all are right now, they’re hesitant to trust you.” Johnny nods slowly. “I’m sure if things were different-” 

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Johnny tells him and Kun sighs deeply, looking at his tea. 

“You’ve barely asked for anything in return for all you’ve done and there’s very little you even know about what is going on. That’s not fair.” It’s not but life is unfair. Johnny knows this better than anyone based on how the last few months have been so as much as he would like to know, he just doesn’t think it’s his place to ask. 

“What good would it be?” He asks, shrugging a shoulder. Kun lifts the tag of the tea bag, moving it around in the hot water. “I can’t do anything. I can’t help you, I won’t have the slightest understanding as to what is going on and what a waste of time it would be if you tried to explain it. There are nuances to this that I’ll never understand,” he says with a little laugh and Kun lifts his eyes as he lifts the tea bag from his cup. “What good would it really be?” 

“Surely there are things you want to know,” Kun points out. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. Anything you want to know, you can ask,” he insists. “I mean it. Whatever it is.”

Johnny shifts his weight, brings his cup to his lips and takes a long sip. There are a lot of things he would like to know but none of them pertain to whatever it is that keeps Kun in his apartment. There are little things that he would like to know, things about sprites and their culture and what they’re like that no one, as far as he knows, has ever been able to ask. Where they’re from, how they live. 

“How old are you?” Johnny finally asks. 

“Oh,” Kun sighs. He tilts his head, looks up to the ceiling and Johnny’s brows both lift as it seems Kun actually has to think about this answer. “It’s been a moment since I celebrated a birthday but I think… a century and a half, maybe,” he finishes and Johnny’s eyes widen considerably. “Not quite what you were expecting, hm?” He comments, lifting his own mug to his lips. 

“You look fantastic for 150,” Johnny tells him and Kun snorts into his mug. “So Sicheng truly had been on the council for a long time.” 

“Sicheng’s a decade or so younger than me,” Kun says casually, lowering his cup down to the counter. “But yes. He was on the council for a long time. He tried to retire once but it wasn’t for him, he felt- still feels very strongly about the politics of the In-Between and it’s relationship between the other realms.” 

“You must’ve known him for a long time,” Johnny says carefully. He doesn’t mean to imply anything but a soft smile takes over Kun’s features anyway. 

“I have. Since long before he was even on the council. He, Ten and I, we’ve been friends for longer than you can imagine.” Johnny doesn’t doubt it.

“And does he… I mean, are you-” 

“Oh, no,” Kun assures him. “It’s not like that.” Johnny nods, tries not to let his relief shine through. “Sicheng and I- we were, at one point, involved. But it’s been a few years since then.” 

“Lovers?” 

“He’s…” Kun pauses as though bracing himself to deliver this information. “Sicheng’s my ex-husband.” Johnny chokes on his tea and Kun gasps but Johnny merely waves him off, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think- it’s not like… it’s very different for us. We terminated our marriage years ago, maybe even a decade. Are you okay?” He asks, coming closer to rub Johnny’s back. 

“I’m fine!” Johnny assures him. He clears his throat a couple of times before he can manage to meet Kun’s eyes again. “So you were married?” He asks. 

“Yes, just once,” Kun says. “Like I said, it was a while ago. And I promise, it’s not personal, it just… ran it’s course. Most marriages do. They’re not like yours,” Kun insists. His hand falls away from Johnny’s back and he steps back to the edge of the counter with his tea, his eyes falling to his mug. “Sicheng and I were in love for a long time but marriage and… everything that went on with Irene, it changed us. It changed our relationship. I think we still would’ve chosen to take the termination clause before it all but… we’ll never truly know.” 

“Termination clause?” 

“Every marriage in the In-Between has a hundred year termination clause. When you live lives as long as we do… marriage for life just isn’t really seen as that practical,” Kun explains and Johnny nods slowly. “There are others who remain married for hundreds of years, I’ve seen it, but there are many more who don’t. When it came time, Sicheng and I chose to split amicably. We’re still friends, we still fight this battle beside each other but we’re not in love anymore. I don’t think we ever will be again.” 

“I’m sorry,” Johnny offers but Kun shakes his head. 

“Don’t be. It’s not truly that sad so much as it is disappointing. The things that Irene has done, it’s changed many things, many people.”

Silence envelopes them and Johnny sips his tea, waiting to see if Kun will offer more information or if he has other questions of his own. Many cycle through his head but he can’t think of anything pertinent enough for him to ask. Kun lifts his head after a few long moments though and tilts his head at Johnny in a considering way and Johnny looks to him, expectant. 

“Yes?” He says. 

“I have a question for you,” Kun says and Johnny gestures to have him go on. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me or what I stand for or really even if I’m fighting on the right side. From your perspective, I could be anyone. And yet you continue to do things to save my life, to take care of me. You could always decline and claim plausible deniability. No one will ever question you and you could continue to live a normal life but you didn’t. How do you know that I’m not the bad guy? How do you justify it?”

It’s a heavy line of questioning and Johnny rests his own mug on the counter. He could think about this for a long time and come up with a slew of answers but one is always on his mind and it matters the absolute most to him. 

“Because you were hurt,” Johnny says. “Because even if I don’t have all the answers and all the facts and I don’t know for certain that you’re not the one in the wrong, I have a bleeding heart, Kun, and I was going to help you regardless of the facts. I wasn’t going to stand idly by and let someone get hurt when I could do something to stop it. Maybe that makes me naive and stupid but… so be it. I justify it in that… no matter who you are and what you’ve done, no one deserves to die like that.” 

“You might be an idiot,” Kun says and Johnny rolls his eyes, grinning to himself. “But you’ve got one hell of a heart, Johnny.” 

“It’s my worst flaw,” Johnny comments, winking at Kun over the lip of his mug as he brings it up to his lips again. 

It’s been almost three weeks since Kun started living in his apartment with him when Ten pops into the apartment at a time that is absolutely god awful. Johnny turns over in bed to glare at the door while Kun groans from where Johnny tucked the trundle into the corner of his room across from him. The air pressure change is most unwelcome considering it’s still dark outside, he and Kun were dead asleep and he can barely focus his eyes as Ten drops to the floor next to Kun’s bed and starts trying to shake him awake. 

“Gods above, what the fuck, Ten,” Kun mumbles, trying to swat Ten’s hands away from him. 

“Get up, you have to get up right now,” Ten tells him and Kun sits up in bed, throwing the blankets off of him. Johnny sits up as well and turns on his bedside lamp, bathing the dark room in a soft yellow glow. Kun looks very grumpy, sitting up in the bed with his long hair in a messy bedhead. It’s been settling slowly over the past few days into what looks like might be indigo, starting to darken up just the day before. There are still a few lingering streaks of blue and pink in there but it’s looking decidedly more blue-purple as of late. 

“What, Ten,” Kun asks and Johnny rubs at his eyes, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. 

“Joy and Irene are dead,” Ten says and Kun goes still. It feels like the whole room drops a few degrees in the single utterance of that sentence. “They killed each other last night over the council seats. The remaining council members have been looking for you and Sicheng to take their seats, Sicheng’s already gone to the city but no one could find you. I told Sicheng I’d get you, you have to go.” 

“I don’t,” Kun says. “It was never supposed to be about me, it was always supposed to be Sicheng, he was meant to take the seat on the council. I’m not meant to be there.” 

“People are expecting you,” Ten stresses. “You have to come, people want to speak to you, they want to hear what you have to say.” 

“I have nothing to say!” Kun says. “I don’t have anything to say to them, I’m not meant to have anything to say to them. From the very beginning I only took charge of the rebellion because Sicheng couldn’t. I don’t deserve that seat, I can’t do anything for them.” 

“But-” 

“You have to go,” Johnny says and Kun turns to look at him, eyes wide and scared. Ten glances to Johnny and then back to Kun but Kun’s gaze remains fixed on Johnny. “Your people want to hear from you.” 

“They’re not mine!” Kun says, breathless. 

“Maybe not but they trust you. They put their faith in you, and it’s you they want to answer to. Even if all you do is decline the seat and stir up the crowd to follow Sicheng, you have to go.” Kun remains still though and Johnny turns his attention to Ten. “Ten, will you give us a moment.” 

“Okay,” Ten huffs. “But quickly.” 

He leaves the room and Johnny slides off the bed to sit on the floor next to Kun’s bed. He’s on his knees next to the bed and it might still be in the middle of the night. He’s exhausted and can barely focus but he reaches out and takes Kun’s hands in his, tugs him closer and offers him a sleepy smile. 

“Kun, you know as well as I do that it was always going to be like this.” Kun swallows, squeezes Johnny’s hands. “From the moment you became a leader to those people they were always going to follow you. They’re going to want you to speak and you may not have any idea what to say so I’ll offer you a little advice. Speak from your heart, tell them the truth and at the end of the day, even if you weren’t meant to be their permanent leader, you’re always going to be a beacon to them. They trust you, they believe in you and now it’s time for you to return the favor.” 

“I’ve always believed in them,” Kun says and Johnny nods. 

“I know. Make sure they do. And above all else, let them know that this change will be for the best. That everything you ever stood for continues to be your plan and then don’t let them down.” 

“If I leave, I don’t know how long it will be before I can come back,” Kun says and Johnny nods again. 

“I know. And that’s okay. Because it’s never been about me, has it?” 

“I’ll come back,” Kun says. “I promise. I’ll come back.” Johnny offers him only a small smile and Kun lets go of his hands to wrap his arms around Johnny’s neck, tugging him in close. 

On this bed, so low to the ground he’s practically sleeping on it, Kun finally does what he’s been too scared to do. Affection is few and far between for him, scared with every waking moment that if he lets another person close they’ll be ripped away from him or they’ll turn into a soldier or an enemy. But Johnny is just a human, a human who’s hands land low on his back and he can feel him breathing against his neck and his heart fluttering where their chests are pressed together. And Kun, despite knowing that Johnny is right and he has to go, he doesn’t ever want to let go. 

Johnny pulls away carefully and lifts a hand to cup the back of Kun’s head, tilting it down to press a kiss to his forehead. Kun breathes a soft laugh and Johnny pulls away entirely. 

This time the air pressure changes, time and space warps and wraps around two people and Johnny is left in the middle of his bedroom at four in the morning with nothing but messy bed sheets and the feeling of Kun in his arms as a ghost of a memory. 

“Oh, aren’t you cute,” Hyuck says. He has to get all the way up on his toes if he even wants to reach Johnny’s cheek so he merely steps back and out of pinching range. He pouts at the way Johnny is avoiding him and Johnny basks in the light of being almost a full foot taller than this little menace before actually greeting them. 

“What do you guys want?” He asks, resting his wrist on the top of the register. 

“You guys are already making strawberry fraps?” Hyuck asks excitedly as his eyes light up when he glances at the menu. He’s already latching himself around Mark, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he stares at the menu in glee. Mark looks at Johnny and he keys in a medium strawberry frap for his half brother’s easily excitable boyfriend. Mark gets a plain drip coffee with milk and ice and they get half a loaf of french bread. They’re going to eat the whole thing in the corner booth over the next half hour they’re going to be in here but Johnny keys it in and wrestles with the crusty loaf until it finally gives up. 

Pleasing Lee Donghyuck is easy once you figure out what it is that pleases him and he grins brightly as Johnny slides the strawberry frap across the counter to him. It’s just barely February but they’ve had their Valentine’s menu up for over a week now. Doyoung complained about it being unnecessary and said they should’ve kept their New Year’s menu up for at least a week longer but Johnny knows it’s just because he has a soft spot for the blue velvet cupcakes Taeyong makes for the season. Taeyong made a batch for his birthday anyway and Johnny thinks they might still have a couple squirreled away in the back of the industrial refrigerator. 

His birthday is coming up and Taeyong keeps asking him what he wants for it. Johnny doesn’t really know what it is that he might want. He has a hard time even believing it’s already February, like the last few months have just slipped away. He’s been working at the bakery for about five or six months now, he’s not certain, and it’s been one of the best changes he could’ve made. He comes home tired and his wrist are sore sometimes and he has to clean flour out from under his nails but this shop has made him so much happier than he thought it might. 

He loves working with his best friends, even if Taeyong and Doyoung’s clashing nature of being in control of everything ever sometimes gives him a migraine. He and Jaemin usually just leave them to it and start serving guests coffee until they get their shit together and realize their employees are avoiding them. Jaehyun also comes in frequently and Johnny once spent an afternoon serving an entire footie team of girls ages 13 to 18 milkshakes because Yuta tumbled in the door with them in toe. It’s been a good change in pace for him and he’s thankful it keeps him out of the house. 

There are still things in the house that remind him of Kun but he supposes that’s just due to Kun being in his apartment with him for three weeks. He still has the sheets Kun slept on in a pile next to his hamper because he’s been lazy and trying to avoid the inevitability of cleaning them. They’re literally the last things Kun touched and Johnny’s not that sentimental but there’s a finality in washing them that says that Kun really is gone and Johnny really doesn’t know if he’s coming back. 

A part of him doesn’t think he is. A part of him really thinks that Kun is too busy, caught up in magic politics and being a leader that he’s forgotten all about Johnny. Johnny tries not to think of it like that because even if neither of them said it really felt like there was something there. So if Kun’s not here it’s because he’s busy, because he’s too important and he had to choose his people before his love life and that’s fine. All of that is totally fine because Kun has always had responsibilities Johnny could never even fathom but the idea that he’s just gone because he forgot all about his promise. 

That hurts far more than Johnny wants to admit to himself. 

Sometimes he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job of keeping those thoughts to himself though. For the short time that he knew Kun, he misses him something awful but he really tries to keep those thoughts away. He really tries to smile more because he is happier. He is thankful he has a job he likes and he’s glad that he gets to see his friends so often and the regulars to the shop greet him and tell him to have a nice day. Johnny hates the idea that he might be letting something that really is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things ruin his days. So he tries to pretend that it doesn’t. 

But he knows he’s doing a bad job because Doyoung is softer with him some days. Jaemin and Jeno both give him free coffee all the time. Yuta and Jaehyun both gently check in with him every time they come in and Yuta tells him to keep his chin up when he leaves. On his off days Mark calls him and asks him to hang out and Johnny spends the entire day trying to reassure him that he’s fine, he’s just having an off day when Mark starts asking him if he’s doing alright. The worst one is Taeyong because Taeyong says, ‘okay’ in his tiny voice when Johnny says he’s fine, with his big caring eyes and it’s starting to bother him because he can’t stand the idea of Taeyong being so worried about him. 

“Are you closing tonight?” Jeno asks, putting his books in his bag. 

“Sure am,” Johnny replies from where he’s sweeping between the tables. It’s a Sunday and the store will be closing earlier than normal, shutting its doors at six instead of eight. Taeyong and Doyoung are going to be in here before six a.m. tomorrow as it is so the store’s only going to be quiet for a short period before the ovens are preheating and the coffee machines are on and Monday morning commuters will be in to get a quick breakfast before their shifts. 

“Oh. Okay,” he says. “See you on Tuesday?” Johnny agrees and then Jeno is bouncing out the door. Doyoung wasn’t in today so it’s just Taeyong bopping around the kitchen until they close up shop.

There aren’t anymore people in the store, that’s the result of the weather still being too cold to let people out and about after the sun goes down, still hitting the horizon at an hour as early as 5:30 in the evening. The sun is just barely trying to make its way through the cloud cover as Johnny shuts and locks the door. He’s already swept, cleaned the coffee machine and wiped down the counters and baked good doors. He wanders into the back to see Taeyong standing at the work table, humming under his breath as he cuts crisp little squares of Johnny’s famous focaccia. 

He was bullied into putting it on the menu and he’s the only one who makes it but it’s too good and too many people have come in to compliment it for Johnny to ever take it back. 

“Sit,” Taeyong tells him, layering a few pieces up on a plate. Johnny sighs but does as he asks, wiping his hands on the front of his apron before pulling a chair up to the work table. Taeyong joins him a second later, two glasses of coffee. It’s just black drip from the back of their refrigerator but it’ll do.

“Yes, Yongie?” Johnny prompts, grabbing his glass to hold it in his lap before taking a slice of bread from the plate. 

“You’re sad,” Taeyong says. “And don’t say you aren’t, I know you are. You have been for awhile and sometimes it’s fine. Sometime it’s almost like you’re not but we haven’t been friends for almost nine years for me to not know what you’re like. And you’re sad, all the time. So how about you finally stop bullshitting me and tell me what’s wrong,” Taeyong asks. 

Johnny chews slowly, turns over the statement in his head. 

There are a lot of things he could tell Taeyong but they’d all be lies. He hasn’t been sleeping well, he’s just still adjusting to the job, but none of them are the truth and Taeyong will see straight through it all. He could tell Taeyong the truth but that’s not really any sort of business Johnny wants to start, especially at this hour. He wants to be honest with his best friend but these days he doesn’t even know that the real, honest to god truth even is. 

“Is it wrong to miss something that wasn’t yours to begin with?” Johnny asks instead and Taeyong shifts back in his seat, leaning against the back of it. 

Taeyong’s face goes through multiple emotions before it lands something soft and understanding. 

“No,” he says. “It’s not. There’s nothing wrong with missing things like that. Didn’t happens. Never would’ve haves. Almosts,” he finishes and Johnny turns his attention to his lap, runs his thumb against the lip of his glass. “It’s okay to miss things. What’s not okay is letting things like that run your life. Because Johnny, baby,” he says and reaches over to rest a hand on his best friend’s knee, getting Johnny’s big brown eyes looking up at him, “they still didn’t happen. And that’s not your fault, but you can’t get hung up on things you almost had. Because you never really had them.” 

“I know,” he sighs and Taeyong pulls his hand back, leans back in his seat. “I’m trying.” 

“Is this about a person?” Taeyong asks and Johnny nods. “Oh, Johnny. I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s stupid,” he brushes off. “You’re right. I never really had them to begin with so I should… I should move on.” 

“That doesn’t mean you don’t get to grieve and I feel like… you’re still in the middle of it.” Taeyong pauses, sighs and offers Johnny a soft smile. “So go through the rest of the steps and once you do, let me know. And we’ll try this whole thing again and try to make you feel better, okay?” Johnny nods, knows Taeyong is just trying to be a good friend but it still feels like this wound isn’t all the way healed and he feels rubbed raw all of the sudden. 

They finish the bread and coffee in silence and Taeyong cleans up while Johnny gathers his things. 

“Johnny,” Taeyong says and Johnny turns to look at him. “I don’t mean to pry but… I didn’t even know you were… you had someone. Is it… it’s not someone I know?” He asks and Johnny shakes his head. 

“No, Yongie, you don’t know ‘im. I don’t think you ever will.” Taeyong looks disappointed by this information. “Don’t look sad. I think that’s a good thing in a way.” 

“Okay,” Taeyong sighs. “Hey, don’t come in tomorrow.” 

“Yong-” 

“I’m serious. Just take the day. Get out of your head for a bit, okay?” He suggests and Johnny agrees. “Have a good night, Johnny.” 

“You too, Yong.” 

Having a day to himself is a dangerous thing, Johnny realizes, because it means it’s just him and his thoughts and everything in his apartment that reminds him of Kun.

It fucking sucks. 

Even the goddamn bathroom reminds him of Kun even though the thought that comes to mind is nothing short of horrific and he decides as he rounds up the things in his apartment that need taking care of, maybe this has gone too far. Maybe Taeyong was right and he should stop living in the past and not get hung up on what almost was because it wasn’t. He knows that so even though his phone is ringing incessantly, he picks up the bundle of sheets from his trundle that he’s been too lazy to wash and carries them to the washer as he answers his phone. 

“Yah?” 

“Hey, Yongie said you’re out for the day. You wanna hang?” Jaehyun asks over the phone. 

“Love to, got laundry out my ass,” he says and he’s not wrong. On top of the sheets he’s been neglecting his hamper could do with emptying as well he thinks he might be out of kitchen towels. And his seasonal jackets could do with a wash. Damn, he does have a lot of laundry. 

“How do you always have laundry?” Jaehyun asks and Johnny huffs as he unravels the bundle of sheets to shove them in his washer. 

“They’re the washing constants of life, Jaehyunnie. There’s always laundry to be done and there’s always dishes to be washed,” he says and Jaehyun laughs in his ear. It is a funny joke but it’s also true and one of the reasons why Johnny can never have a clean house. 

Johnny runs the washer as he chats idly with Jaehyun. It’s a nice conversation and for some reason it feels like he hasn’t actually done this with his friend in a very long time. It might be the combination of his long unemployment stint, trying to hide fae folk from his friends and the fact that the last handful of months have felt almost like a fog. He feels like he’s been working on autopilot a lot and to finally not be doing that again is a huge weight lifted off his back. 

“Alright well let me know if you want to get together later, okay?” Jaehyun says and Johnny agrees. Going out for a few drinks actually sounds pretty good and it's early in the day still, not even noon so he’s not going to count it out yet. He trades out his laundry as Jaehyun tells him he’s going and Johnny hangs up, tosses his phone on top of the washer as he starts the dryer up. 

Deciding to finally look at his seasonal jackets, all piled up on his coat rack and about two second away from tipping over, he tugs his leather jacket, denim jacket, multiple hoodies off of it. He’ll have to go to the laundromat if he wants to wash his coat so he leaves it there but as he pulls a discarded flannel from the trash heap that is his coat rack, he finds a jacket he doesn’t recognize. He tugs it off and wanders back over towards his washer, still open and waiting for laundry, turning it over in his hands. 

It’s thick and warm and when he checks the pockets nothing comes up but he flips open the inside and finds streaks of what look like glitter glue on the inside by the collar. 

Johnny pauses at the corner of the hallway and runs his fingers over the inside of the collar. He totally forgot he even had this, never gave it back because chances are, neither of them knew it was still here. He tosses it on top of the dryer with a sigh before beginning to load his washer with his washable jackets. He sets them a basic wash cycle and wanders back into the bedroom, tossing it on his bed before going for his closet. He’s pretty sure he has a box of donation clothes in there somewhere. 

He’s been digging around in the bottom of his closet for a long time when he feels it. The way the air changes in his apartment, a weird little snap that makes his ears pop and time and space feel warped for a moment. He keeps his head in the closet though, doesn’t want to face whoever the fuck is in his apartment when he’s finally getitng his life together again. 

But he can’t hide in his closet forever and he turns from where he’s half in it to look. 

“You know I’ve been looking for this all winter?” Kun says, holding up the jacket where he’s sitting on the edge of Johnny’s bed towards the foot of it. “I swear I left it somewhere and I’ve been all over my apartment looking for the damn thing. I see the collar is still stained but it’s the inside so it shouldn’t be too bad, still wearable.” He says this all while turning the coat over in his hands, running his hands down the inside. “What were you doing in your closet?” He asks, lifting a brow. 

“Well, I was going to donate it,” Johnny says, leaning against the doorway. 

“My jacket?” He says in a faux outrage. “Well, I never.” 

“Well, I didn’t think you were going to come back for it, so,” Johnny says and Kun lowers the garment to Johnny’s bed before lifting his eyes to meet Johnny’s. 

“It has been a minute, hasn’t it?” 

“You think?” Johnny retorts and he didn’t expect to get mad. He didn’t want to get mad but he’s feeling a little sore about this whole situation. 

Kun’s been gone for months on end and he pops up in Johnny’s apartment like nothing’s changed. Like Johnny hasn’t been expecting him to come back and quietly waiting for him and wondering where he is. Johnny’s not a total idiot so he figured it might be awhile but he hoped for something. A moment for Kun to come back and even just say, “hey, I’m okay and the realm didn’t collapse and I can’t stay but I’m not gonna be gone forever,” because that’s not that much to ask, especially when Johnny can’t even get a hold of him. 

“You’re upset with me, and you have every right,” Kun says gingerly, getting to his feet. “I know it’s been a while. I know I was gone a long time but I said I’d be back, didn’t I?” He says. He reaches for Johnny but Johnny leans back and Kun looks unbelievably hurt. “Johnny-” 

“I thought you forgot about me,” he says and it’s the first time he’s said it out loud. It’s the first time he’s ever seriously entertained it because it fucking hurt to think about, the very idea that Kun might just completely forget about the human he changed the entire world view of. But it’s true, because it’s always existed in the back of his mind, as something that might’ve happened. Something that could’ve happened and he might never know the truth because Kun wasn’t coming back. 

“Really?” He asks and his breath catches as he says it. “You really thought that?” 

“It’s been almost six months,” Johnny points out. “I don’t really understand how time moves there but that’s a long fucking time for me and there were times where I really thought you weren’t coming back. In the beginning, I thought it might be awhile. I thought you were so busy and it would’ve been fine if it had been two, three months but you didn’t come back to say anything. You didn’t even tell me you were okay, or that the others were okay or that things are changing, I was left here waiting for you like some kind of damsel in distress and that’s not really my thing, Kun.” He laughs a bitter, disbelieving laugh and his eyes fall to the carpet. “I was worried. I think that was the worst part.” 

Kun reaches out again and this time Johnny lets him cup his jaw gently, tilt his face up and look into his eyes. Johnny feels so fucking tired and strung out and confused and he was finally taking steps to move on and here he is. Here Kun is, with his glittering indigo hair and dark brown eyes and Johnny wants to find out what they almost had but he doesn’t want to find out only to have it ripped away from him. 

“I know I was gone a long time,” he says, eyes falling to the floor. “I know I didn’t come back even once and I know you must’ve been worried but you have to believe me when I tell you that I thought about you every day. Every day I couldn’t see you I thought about you and how worried you must be and how I needed to see you. I thought about it so much and every time I thought I could get away I couldn’t. There was always something that needed me, someone who wanted to talk to me and try as I might I never could find the time to see you and it was awful. All I wanted was to see you; I could never forget you, Johnny. I swear, to every God above, I could never forget you for as long as I live and that’s… a mighty long time.” 

Johnny pushes off from the doorframe and his hands find Kun’s waist and he tugs him in closer. Kun stumbles over his feet as Johnny pulls him in close, so close they’re pressed against each other and Kun’s eyes lift further to look him in the eye. Johnny’s hands slide over his back, up under his shirt and Kun shivers as they slip between his wings and the smooth skin of his back. His fingers brush the place where his wings are fixed to his back and when the light catches Kun’s dark brown eyes they shine blue-silver for a fleeting open, strange and alien. 

There are a lot of things that tell Johnny not to do this. The uncertainty of what this could be above everything else hangs over his head, looking down into Kun’s gorgeous brown eyes and wondering what kind of future could they ever have. This is still illegal as far as Johnny knows. This is dangerous and reckless and Kun can never stay here, not indefinitely but he removes a hand from underneath Kun’s shirt to cup his cheek at the same time Kun moves a hand to his shoulder and his tongue darts to wet his lower lip. 

Johnny follows that movement with his eyes, the way it leaves his pretty plush lips shiny. And even Kun told him he might be an idiot so he thinks Kun might just forgive him if he’s read all of this wrong.

“You promise?” Johnny whispers and Kun’s brow creases a little. “You promise not to forget me? That you’ll never forget me.” 

“Not even if I tried,” Kun admits and Johnny hauls him in then, presses their lips together and listens to the way Kun breaths into his mouth, deep and gasping. He feels it when Kun breathes again, the way his chest moves pressed up against his own and Johnny remove his other hand from under Kun’s shirt to wrap his arm around his waist, tugging him so close their hips are pressed together now and Kun’s mouth falls open in a broken little sound that Johnny chases with his tongue. 

Kissing Kun is something he’s thought about many times before, more than he can count in the past six months alone and the way Kun opens his mouth is nothing short of a blessing. Nothing short of an absolute miracle, something that Johnny can barely comprehend, the way the hand Kun still has on his jaw presses its thumb into his jaw, opening his mouth wider to kiss deeper. Kun kisses with a kind of intention that makes Johnny weak kneed and desperate, the kind of kiss he hasn’t experienced in so long he’s almost forgotten what it could feel like. 

He doesn’t want to stop now that he’s been given this. He doesn’t want to let go of Kun and talk about this, about what this could mean because stopping means letting reality crash back in. Johnny wants to live in this moment, suspended in mid air with the only thing he knows being the way Kun’s tongue rolls over his own, the taste of the lines of Kun’s teeth, the smooth skin of Kun’s neck and jaw under his fingers as he drags his hand down from his face to cradle his neck gently. 

“Johnny,” Kun murmurs into his lips and Johnny doesn’t think he’s ever heard a thing more beautiful in his life. Kisses the taste of his own name off Kun’s lips and pushes him back, guides him back into the room. It’s hard to do so with the way they’re plastered together but Johnny manages to get the two of them to the bed and Johnny turns him around, climbs up onto the bed and drags Kun down after him. 

Kun falls rather unceremoniously on his lap but he breathes a laugh into Johnny’s mouth and it sounds high pitched and giddy and all hope isn’t lost. He’s not just making this up in his head and if he is this is a rather vivid dream. He can feel Kun’s hands on his shoulders, sliding down over his chest and ribs and stomach, finding purchase on the waistband of his jeans. He tips his head back into the pillows and Kun licks into his mouth, insistent and wet and Johnny grips at Kun’s hips, presses him down as he arches up and if he’s making up Kun he really does have a wilder imagination than he ever thought. Because the moan Kun lets out, breaking their kiss to pant into Johnny’s mouth, is nothing short of wicked. 

Johnny pushes at the jacket he’s wearing then, and it falls to the floor, followed shortly by his shirt as Kun tugs it up and over his head. He’s still got scars, jagged ones and clean ones and Johnny shifts to press kisses to the ones that look like impressions down the middle of his sternum. Kun runs a hand through Johnny’s hair as he does so, looking down at him with half lidded eyes and Johnny kisses up his body, lets his lips linger and press against the length of all three scars next to his collarbone before moving on. His mouth finally finds the place where Kun’s pulse jumps in his chest, finds that it beats double speed of his own, but he finds that endearing in a way, the way he literally makes Kun’s heart race like that and bites a bruise into that place. 

He moans again and Johnny’s fingers find the fastenings on his jeans, begins pulling them apart as he starts sucking a myriad of bruises on his throat. If this is all the time he gets with Kun he’ll be certain Kun never, ever forgets him or the way Johnny makes him feel. He pulls his jeans all the way apart and slides a hand between his underwear and his jeans, can feel him getting hard, only for Kun to reach out, wrap his fingers against Johnny’s wrist and stop him. 

“I’m not like you,” Kun reminds him. “You don’t know what you’re going to find down there.” 

“I don’t care,” Johnny confesses. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck as to what the hell is in your pants because I think somewhere along the line I fucked myself over and fell for you so it really doesn’t matter to me what you look like. I’m so beyond that point it doesn’t even matter.” 

“Only if you’re sure.” 

Johnny reaches up with his free hand and tugs Kun down into a kiss, their lips crushed together, Kun making an aborted noise in the back of his throat as Johnny kisses him into silence. 

Johnny’s hand slides out of his jeans and instead uses his leverage to turn them over. Kun falls to the bed, and his wings flutter as they sprawl across Johnny’s bed. They’re far too big and Johnny worries for a moment that it’s uncomfortable for him but Kun shifts only minutely and his wings slide down his back but don’t disappear completely. They frame his ribs like stained glass and Johnny leans down to kiss him again, making his way steadily down Kun’s body, from his lips to his neck, sparing a moment for every scar on his torso until he’s knelt between Kun’s legs and tugging at his jeans again. 

Kun looks away shyly as Johnny tugs his jeans down and off. He can see the way Kun is tenting in his boxers and he curls his fingers in the waistband, tugging them down and out of the way. He struggles with Kun’s shoes and socks for a moment, making Kun snort before he settles between Kun’s thighs again. 

For all the warning Kun did, Johnny isn’t at all surprised by what Kun’s cock looks like. It’s rather average looking all things considered, even if it is a little slimmer and shorter in build than Johnny is used to. He doesn’t even hesitate to wrap his fingers around the base and Kun gasps, hips bucking of their own accord as Johnny strokes him slow and measured, watching the way Kun’s eyelids flutter prettily. The fluid it leaks catches the light coming from Johnny’s window and one day he will stop being surprised that apparently all of Kun’s bodily fluids are infused with glitter. 

“This is a rather anticlimactic reveal,” Johnny comments and Kun huffs, looking down at him with hooded eyes. “You said it as though I was going to find something alien in your pants. This is rather normal all things considered.” 

“Well, to be honest with you, I have no idea what you’re going to look like so I thought it was best you brace for the worst.” 

Johnny gets up on his knees then and Kun pushes himself to his elbows as Johnny unties his joggers. He’s been lounging around his house all day so he’s not really been dressed at all but it turns out to be more useful than he ever imagined as he shoves his joggers down his thighs. The way Kun’s breath catches definitely fuels Johnny’s ego a little bit because he knows he’s big, he got lucky when he hit puberty but it still feels good to be recognized. 

“I don’t know that it’s going to fit,” Kun says and Johnny tilts his head at him. “Unless you want to do it the other way around.” 

“Fuck, I hope I have in date condoms,” Johnny says and Kun laughs as he falls back in the bed. Johnny peels his shirt off and then kicks his joggers over the edge of the bed before laying over Kun to reach for his bedside table. Kun wraps his arms around Johnny’s shoulders as Johnny reaches over, rummaging around in the drawer for his lube and condoms. The lube lands on the bed first and Kun tilts his head this time. 

“I don’t think you’ll need that,” Kun informs him and Johnny turns his head to view him. “Just trust me.” 

He does unearth a box of condoms however and checks the date quickly. It’s a miracle they’re still in date, he literally doesn’t know when he bought them but he yanks one out of the box, letting it tumble to the floor before slipping back between Kun’s legs.

Kun’s arms keep him trapped against him though and Kun tugs him down into a kiss. It’s soft and sweet and warm and Johnny kisses him back, deeply. It reignites something deep in his chest and his lower stomach, the fact that this isn’t just anyone he’s about to share a bed with. Kun’s hand travels up the back of his head, threads through his hair and Johnny holds him by the waist as they kiss. It’s smoother than before, less tongue and teeth but just as full and desperate. Both of them still strung tight with need and this time Kun gets to his neck before Johnny can get to his, kissing down his throat, biting along the side and to the base of it, beginning to suck bruises there. Johnny squirms a bit, bumps their cocks together and they’re both hard, slick with precome and Kun rolls his hips up into the attention. 

Johnny untangles himself from Kun’s arms to return his attention to his cock. It’s still hard and thick and Johnny eases his hand down the length of it, listens to the way Kun moans for a moment before letting his hand slide back behind his cock. 

It’s a startling realization, that there’s a slick opening behind his cock. There are no balls at all down here and when Johnny lets his fingers drag along the slick slit, Kun whines. It’s so hot, the way he reacts to the stimulation. And maybe Kun had a point, maybe in Johnny’s lust driven haze he really wasn’t looking. But he pushes a finger slowly but surely into Kun and he arches up, fingers finding the blankets under his wings and whining again. He sounds so beautiful and Johnny sets an easy pace, watches the way Kun’s eyelids flutter as he looks down at Johnny, blissed out of his mind. 

“We really aren’t the same, are we?” Johnny asks but it’s a rhetorical question and it’s made all the clearer as he pushes a second finger into Kun, scissoring and opening him up. Kun chokes on Johnny’s name as Johnny rubs his fingers along Kun’s walls, can feel the way he’s dripping slick incessantly. 

“Do you want the scientific answer or are you gonna fuck me?” Kun breaths and Johnny smirks, beginning to pump his fingers in and out of Kun. Kun gasps for breath above him and Johnny wraps the fingers of his opposite hand around the base of Kun’s cock, slowly stroking him at the same time he thrusts his fingers and Kun squirms from the overstimulation. 

He can only keep this up for a short period and when Kun feels ready he pushes a third finger into him. Kun hisses at the way he stretches around Johnny’s fingers but Johnny knows better to over prep than under prep. The very idea that Kun thinks he might not fit has Johnny a little nervous but very determined to give Kun as much of him as he possibly can so he spreads his fingers a bit, rubs along the walls of him and can feel the way Kun relaxes, slowly but surely around Johnny’s seeking fingers. 

“Now, now,” Kun breaths. “Please, Johnny,” he sighs and Johnny slides his fingers out Kun’s wet entrance, pauses to watch him clench around nothing before he grabs for the condom. 

It’s a struggle to open but once he does it slides on easily and he hooks one of Kun’s legs over his hip. Kun’s eyes look so pretty like this, glazed with arousal and Johnny’s gaze trails from his eyes to cheeks, flushed with arousal, down to his neck and chest, to his kiss swollen lips and the bruises sure to darken all down the length of Kun’s neck. He looks like something out of a dream and Johnny tears his eyes away only because he can’t think of anything better than getting to please this beautiful creature in his bed. 

Kun’s entrance is slick and warm but he’s tight and Kun arches up as Johnny slides in. He opens up for Johnny beautifully and Johnny watches the way precome pearls at the tip of his cock as he does so. Johnny manages to push all the way into him, hips flush to Kun’s and Kun makes the most incredible noise as he circles his hips back against Johnny’s cock. Johnny swallows against his desire to fuck up into him immediately but it’s hard when Kun won’t stop whining, pushing his hips against Johnny’s, all but begging him to fuck him deep. 

“Johnny, please,” he moans.

Johnny holds tightly to his hips and pulls out slowly, fucking back into him at the same steady pace. Kun’s eyes are squeezed shut and he’s panting, writhing around in Johnny’s sheets and just looking at him like this is making it hard to retain his self control. He looks unendingly gorgeous and Johnny wants to ruin him.

He leans over Kun then, braces his hands next to Kun’s head and watches him from up close. Kun’s legs wrap around his waist and Johnny picks up his pace steadily. He doesn’t think he could ever get over the way Kun’s mouth falls open, pretty plush lips rounded and eyelids fluttering, opening only to roll back in his head. Johnny can feel it every time Kun clenches around him, looks down to where he’s disappearing into Kun, slick entrance taking all of him and he feels delirious with pleasure. His gut is in knots and he knows an orgasm when it begins in his stomach, centering behind his navel and his balls tightening but he wants to see Kun come first. 

Easing back, he wraps his fingers around Kun’s cock, jerking Kun off quickly as he begins fucking him faster. The little choked noises Kun keeps making are nothing short of delicious and Johnny loves every second of them, fucking in deep and hard, tightening his fingers on the upstroke. 

“Close, Johnny, I’m gonna come,” he breathes. 

“Come for me, love,” Johnny tells him and Kun clenches hard around him, tight and unrelenting and Johnny bends over Kun, braces himself on a hand as his fingers milk Kun’s orgasm out of him. Kun has a vice grip on his cock, so warm and wet around him and his cock drips come down on his stomach. He looks like something otherworldly, the way his features smooth out and his mouth falls open in the prettiest little o shape. 

Johnny chases his orgasm, a feat that Kun makes all the easier, the way his entrance is gushing slick and still keeps fluttering around his cock. Johnny stills only a couple more thrusts in, breathing Kun’s name as he comes into the condom. Kun’s hands slide up his back, soothing him as he comes down. Johnny feels a little bit like he’s about to shake apart and Kun eases him down on the bed, the two of them tangled up in the blankets on their sides

Johnny catches a bit of movement through his blurry vision, Kun’s wings folding down along his back. Johnny is still inside of Kun and they’re starting to get sticky between their bodies, Kun’s come and slick transferring onto Johnny’s skin. Johnny doesn’t know how he’s going to get out of this, his body feels slow and exhausted and Kun isn’t helping, the way his hand keeps running through Johnny’s hair. 

“I have to clean up,” Johnny mumbles. 

“You look tired,” Kun points out. 

“The condom,” Johnny reminds him and Kun sighs but lets go of him. 

Johnny slips from Kun’s body and Kun moans softly at the feeling. He makes quick work of discarding the condom and comes back from the bathroom with a washcloth and climbs into the bed, manhandles Kun onto his back and begins cleaning him up. He’s coated in his own come and slick is sticking to his thighs. 

“If you’re curious, all sprites are what you humans call intersex or bisexual. I could carry a child to term if I wanted,” Kun answers Johnny’s unasked question and Johnny shakes his head to himself with a grin. 

“I was but I wasn’t going to ask. Thank you for the fae folk science lesson,” Johnny tells him. Kun shrugs a shoulder with a self satisfied smirk as he gets settled in bed, Johnny throwing his washcloth at his hamper before climbing in with him. He wraps himself practically all the way around Kun again and settles his cheek on Kun’s shoulder while Kun starts running his fingers through his hair again. 

“Go to sleep,” Kun tells him. “I’ll wake you later. You look tired, baby,” Kun cooes and Johnny can’t think of a single reason why he might argue with him. 

Time is a totally foreign concept, Johnny thinks, when he wakes back up. He has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been out. The first thing he’s aware of is the fact that he’s still wrapped almost entirely around Kun in his bed, all of their clothes are still on the floor and he feels very warm and cozy where he is. His eyes are all bleary with sleep and he blinks a couple of times to get them to focus. His head is pillowed on his pillow, his arms are wrapped around Kun’s waist and Kun’s looking down at him with his head propped on his hand, opposite hand sliding up and down Johnny’s side. He still feels very hazy and confused but rather than try and hash out what the hell is going on he chooses to tighten his hold around Kun’s middle and let his head sink further into the pillow. 

“Good morning,” Kun says, a teasing lilt to his voice. 

“What time is it?” Johnny rasps. 

“I have no idea. You’ve been out for a couple of hours I think but I lost track of time when I dozed off as well. I woke up just a few minutes before you,” he explains and Johnny shifts slightly. Kun hums at the movement, something sweet and high and Johnny realizes a second later that they’re pressed together chest to hip. 

He settles back down, Kun’s leg thrown over his hip and refusing to let go of him at all. Johnny is aware of time having passed and that he has no idea how long Kun intended to stay so he tilts his head back a bit to meet Kun’s eyes. The sunlight coming through the window is turning golden but it’s still February so that’s a poor indicator of time. His eyes shine blue-silver when Johnny meets his eyes at certain angles. 

“How long can you stay?” Johnny asks. 

“As long as you want me to,” Kun replies and Johnny breathes a laugh, shakes his head at him. 

“We both know that’s not true because if I had it my way I’d never let you leave,” he says. Kun hums sadly and Johnny pushes himself forward to kiss him, meant to be quick and chaste but Kun rests a hand on his jaw and keeps him there. They kiss slowly for a few moments, soft meetings of lips that transcend into one another until Kun finally lets him pull away. 

“Johnny,” Kun whispers. “Do you remember… what Ten said. Before all of this, back at the safe house.” 

He has to wrack his brain because that must be almost eight months ago by now. He can remember that tiny house with even smaller windows and only about three rooms but it’s coated with anxiety and panic. He can barely remember the things they said at all and he tilts his head at Kun before shaking his head. 

“He proposed… that your mother was fae. And I still don’t think that's true but… the implication that one… maybe that I could…” He trails off but Johnny can see where he’s going with this, the way his eyes slide to the side, deep in thought. Johnny lifts a hand from Kun’s waist to his face, turns it slightly so their eyes will meet again. 

“I don’t want you to do that,” Johnny says. It’s still a fog but he has a vague recollection of Yangyang saying something about gaining mortality and as much as he would like that, he can’t ask that of Kun. 

“But why not? If it’s an option, why shouldn’t I?” 

“Could you go back?” Johnny asks and Kun’s eyes fall. “We’ve known each other for such a short time and while there’s nothing in this world I would want more than to pretend that this is perfect and untouchable, it’s not. There’s so much we still have yet to learn about each other, so many trials we might have to go through and if you do this, you’re not committing to me, you’re committing to an entirely different life. Do you really want to do that?” 

“Sometimes you find things,” he begins, brushing his thumb over Johnny’s cheek, “that you truly think you could never find again. I’ve been in love before, I’ve been married and happy and I’m sure I could find that again with someone else, someone like me, but those show up all the time. If I decided I wanted to settle down with someone else I’m sure I could but they’d all be just the same. You are not the same. From the moment I met you, I knew you were a very strange human, and I’ve only been more sure of it the longer I’ve known you. And at the end of the day, there are no others like you. I can find a thousand lovers all the same but you are my once in a lifetime. There will never be another like you for me. And if I have to strip myself of my wings to get to have you, from now until death, I’ll do it.” 

“You have so much time to find another love,” Johnny reminds him. 

“When you live lives like ours you can see when something is different. You can see when things come along that you will never find again. I’ll never find another like you and I know that for certain. If anything, I know that,” Kun tells him. 

“Please don’t trade your wings for me,” Johnny says. “Not yet, at least. If, one day, the both of us truly see a forever in each other, a kind of forever that we both know we’ll always have, I promise you I’ll hold your hand the entire time they take your wings. But until that day, please don’t do anything that you can’t reverse. Because you can’t take it back, can you?” He asks. 

“I don’t know,” Kun admits. “No one has ever tried.” 

Well, that suggests more than a couple things. 

“I don’t suggest testing our luck then,” Johnny tells him and Kun snorts, ducking his head. Johnny presses a kiss to his forehead, dropping his hand back to Kun’s waist. When Kun lifts his head, Johnny kisses him again and Kun moves forward, causing Johnny to roll onto his back. 

Their lips meet languidly, Kun’s hands sliding slowly down Johnny’s body, from his shoulders to his arms, back up to his chest, along his stomach and finding purchase on his waist as he rolls his hips down into Johnny’s. He does it with intention but without rush, takes his time as he lets their cocks slide together, thickening and hardening between the two of them. Johnny moans into Kun’s mouth, can feel it when Kun’s slick entrance drags along his cock, dripping slick down to his balls.

It’s been a long time since Johnny’s been with a woman and it’s a startling feeling, the wetness that rubs off on his skin. Kun keeps kissing him, licking his way into his mouth and Johnny lets his hand slide down between Kun’s thighs, touch along the sensitive skin of his slit. Kun jerks reactively and Johnny smirks into his lips, pulls back to bite at his lower lip. 

The box of condoms is on the floor and Kun reaches over the side of the bed to pull one out. Johnny watches him tear it open quickly with eyes half lidded and his cock already hard. Kun makes quick work of rolling the condom down onto Johnny’s cock and then it’s only a moment before Kun is sinking down onto him, spreading his knees and laying himself down on top of Johnny. He’s still so tight and Kun rocks his hips down into Johnny’s, hiding his face in the crook of Johnny’s neck as he moans softly. 

Johnny slides his hands down Kun’s body, from his waist up his back and back down, over the curve of his waist as Kun continues to fuck himself down on Johnny’s cock. His hands continue down over his lower back, cups his ass and his finger brushes the pucker of his rim. Kun jerks again, moans brokenly into Johnny’s neck and Johnny rubs the pad of his finger against his rim purposefully. 

“How many ways can I pleasure you, I wonder,” Johnny mumbles aloud, feels the way Kun giggles against his throat, his breath hitching as Johnny lifts his hips up into him. Kun’s cock is trapped between their bodies, leaking on both of their stomachs, his cunt is wet and tight around Johnny’s cock and he keeps whining every time Johnny strokes over his rim and it’s so much. There are so many ways Johnny could please him and he’s desperate to find every single one of them. 

Count on Johnny’s phone to start ringing now of all times. 

“Jesus,” Johnny moans. “Who is calling me?” He wonders, looking to his bedside table where his phone rings and vibrates unapologetically. 

“They actually called a couple times while you were asleep. I figured I shouldn’t answer it, I don’t think I would have enough answers to all their questions,” Kun says. He pulls back, props himself up on his hands next to Johnny’s head and Johnny does not want to answer his phone. 

Kun is still rocking his hips despite the very obviously ringing phone, Johnny has his hands on his ass, and Kun looks incredible like this. The sun glitters gold over Kun’s shoulders, creates dazzling shadows of indigo, blue, purple through his wings that continue to flutter, half folded along Kun’s back. They seem to be reacting to the stimulation of their owner, the way they can’t stop moving, twitching and fluttering and Johnny wants to touch them. Wants to know how Kun might react if Johnny chose now to run his fingers down the sensitive membranes of them. 

His phone will not stop ringing though so Johnny reaches a hand to grab it. Kun stills on top of him, smirking to himself as Johnny answers the call. 

“Hello?” He grumbles. 

“Oh my God! He’s alive, Taeyong!” Doyoung shouts in his ear and Johnny can hear Taeyong squawking unintelligibly in the background. “Where the fuck have you been? You know it’s like four in the afternoon, right? Jaehyun said he called you earlier and you said you’d get back to him about hanging out so he texted you around two and nothing? You never ignore texts, phone calls sometimes, but Jaehyun was worried so he called you and then Tae hyung called you and then I called you!” 

“Can a man take a fucking nap in peace?” Johnny replies. “I was literally just sleeping, what the fuck?” 

“You don’t nap!” Doyoung accuses. “You’re a chronic busy body, you don’t nap. Why the fuck would we think you’re asleep?” 

“Yong told me to rest today. Maybe I thought I deserved a nap,” Johnny retorts. Doyoung splutters in his ear and then shouts at Taeyong to take the phone. No surprise there so Johnny waits while Kun sits back on Johnny’s hips, pushing Johnny deeper into him and Johnny removes the phone from his ear to clear his throat. It’s a poorly concealed groan and Kun looked entirely too satisfied with himself where he’s sitting on Johnny. 

“You, are you okay?” Taeyong asks as soon as Johnny has the phone back against his ear. 

“I’m fine. And I really mean it this time, I’m fine, Yongie,” Johnny insists. Taeyong hums, unconvinced in his ear and normally Johnny would let him hum to his heart’s content but he’s in a bit of a situation right now and doesn’t really want to come while on the phone with his best friend. “Look, Yong, I just woke up. Can I have like thirty minutes to put myself together before you start grilling me?” 

“Fine,” Taeyong agrees. “Only because I know you don’t nap so if you actually napped, you’re probably fucked up right now. But we’re not done here, Johnny Suh! We’re not!” 

“Understood. Call me in thirty minutes.” 

He doesn’t even wait for Taeyong to agree before hanging up and tossing his phone on the floor. He tugs Kun back down with hands on his waist, Kun laughing as he lays himself back down over Johnny’s frame. 

“So we have thirty minutes?” Kun asks and Johnny groans. 

“Please do not make me wait thirty minutes to come.” 

Kun does not make him wait that long, in fact it’s probably no less than ten minutes of Kun grinding down on Johnny’s cock before they both shake apart in each other’s arms. He’s gasping and writhing on top of Johnny as Johnny guides his hips, hands holding onto Kun’s ass and Kun’s cock sliding back and forth on Johnny’s abs, dripping precome all over their stomachs. Johnny kisses his temple, whispering encouragement as Kun moans into Johnny’s neck, coming just from Johnny’s cock, the slow and steady build of their orgasms washing through him suddenly. 

Johnny has a feeling he’s going to have to get used to the way Kun clenches on him, tight and intense, slick easing the way as he attempts only a couple of thrusts before he’s coming as well. Kun is still gasping into his neck as Johnny comes, sliding his hands up from Kun’s backside to his back, keeping them pressed together. 

Due to the fact that he now has Taeyong calling him in a matter of minutes, Johnny cleans them both up and actually removes himself from the bed. He hesitates for a long period before dressing because Kun remains in his bed, sprawled under the blankets, naked and so alluring. He looks up at Johnny from his position in the blankets and Johnny knows how the average man gets tempted by fae folk in all those stories now. 

There really is something impossible about how handsome Kun is. And when you combine it with his magical features, his wings and shiny eyes and colored hair, the average man really doesn’t stand a chance. Johnny considers himself lucky that Kun isn’t the malicious kind because he would’ve fallen right into his trap. 

Johnny tears his eyes away after a moment, knows he has to or he may never actually leave Kun’s side. 

Taeyong grills him for something close to 45 minutes when he calls later and Johnny wanders around his apartment, cleaning things and dealing with his laundry as he does so. Kun appears from his bedroom wearing a variety of Johnny’s clothes and Johnny spends as much time as possible not looking as he’s on the phone. Kun commandeers his kitchen in the meantime and when Johnny is finally free of his best friend he sets his phone aside and wraps his arms around Kun’s waist as he pours them both tea. 

“Have you thought about dinner?” Kun asks and Johnny hums. 

“I haven’t. Are you staying?” He asks. 

“I told you I would.” 

“You have to go back eventually though,” Johnny points out. “How long, realistically, do I have you?” 

“Realistically?” Kun comments and Johnny nods, tucking his face into Kun’s neck. “Until tomorrow morning.” 

“Then let’s order in. I don’t want to let go of you all night.”

**Author's Note:**

> i could write full paragraphs about this fic and the emotions that came with it but i feel as though there were instances in which you, as the reader, might've tapped into a few of them given some of the content. at the end of the day, this fic was hard to finish but i truly think i came out the other end with something beautiful and i'm thankful it exists. 
> 
> thank you to everyone who came this far and i hope you truly enjoyed it. 
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/sofarsoperfect)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/sofarsoperfect)


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